Russian Roulette
by Soz
Summary: Seedy gun-toting, cheap-perfume wearing Sirius/Narcissa/Lucius triangle stretching from the illegal disco dance clubs of Communist-controlled Moscow to the Soviet prison camps of Western Siberia. Find who made & broke Sirius Black before Azkaban.
1. Red Scare

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Title: Russian Roulette Prolouge: Red Scare

Author Name: Soz

Author Email: canadadry@apexmail.com

Category: Romance/Angst

Keywords: Sirius/Narcissa, Lucius, Sirius, Narcissa

Spoilers: all the books

Rating: R

Summary: Sirius/Narcissa/Lucius triangle stretching from the illegal disco dance clubs of Communist-controlled Moscow to the Soviet prison camps of Western Siberia. Find what made and broke Sirius Black before he set foot in Azkaban.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Neither am I making any claims on Birkenstocks or the Communist Manifesto. 

Author's Note: Thanks to CLS for her beta, and all of you for giving this a read :O)

****

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

PROLOUGE- RED SCARE

It was Moscow, 1979, and people were freezing.

Rostof Hood and his band of Merry Mensheviks were at the top of the charts, with their hit single _Steal from the Poor, Give to the State_. 

Leonold Feodorovitch has just been elected as the director of the _Sovjetski Drustvo Earovnik_, the Soviet Ministry of Magic. He promised to bring union to all peoples, magical and non. All peoples laughed. Politicians had been promising that for years. 

It was the coldest winter in recorded Muscovite history. That's saying a lot. The Muscovites are a people who call 26 degrees below zero _brisk_. Of course they would use the specific word _brisk_. The Muscovites speak Russian after all. It would sound more like _gibèen_.

Gibèen or not, Moscow was freezing. The living were affected with a pre-death rigor mortis, their movements stiff and sluggish as they found themselves trapped in a hell that had indeed frozen over. The lifeblood of the city turned to ice as its citizens simply gave up, laid down in the streets, and died. Their frozen bodies had to be removed with pick axes. 

To political revolutionaries this was as blatant a sign as any that Communism was not working, that Marx's land of proletarian utopia had turned into a killing field. Or a bureaucrat's paradise. It all depended on what end of the pecking order you were at. But the political revolutionaries waited. They knew how to be patient. 

So things simmered beneath the surface. 

tension.anger.pain.hunger.cold.

and yes…

love.

There was only one place where Moscow could escape from itself, from all the dying and freezing and despair:

The Russian Roulette.

Capital of Decadence.

Palace of Primal Urges.

And the saving grace of the winter of 1979.

----

If it wasn't for the Cold War, Sirius would have never set foot in Moscow. 

The Cold War wasn't quite cold. It was pretty damn hot considering it got two of the most powerful nations on the face of the earth pumping their entire treasuries into…

****

NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

…which they would have to destroy 20 years later on the pleas of tree-hugging-Birkenstock®-wearing environmentalists who existed solely on a diet of soy enchiladas.

----

If it wasn't for James, they would have never gotten this god-awful assignment. 

The commie-hunts were hitting the wizarding world a decade late and James was not the only one to be bitten by the red bug. 

He had begged his father tirelessly for the Russia mission. And James's father, being the Minister of Magic, had caved to his son's demands. That's the way it usually was. 

James knew how to win.

----

If it wasn't for Anti-Soviet propaganda, none of this story would have ever happened. 

Red Scare had swept across wizarding England like a tidal wave. Owls poured into Hogwarts, insisting that the students be instructed in Communist-Repelling Curses. Frantic Hogwarts staff members pumped letters into the Department for Experimental Charms demanding that such curses be invented. 

And all was in great mayhem. 

Throughout the panic, one man stood tall: Harold L. Potter, Minister of Magic. Harold L. Potter was never Harry or Harvey or Harley or Hal. He wasn't a man who tended well to nicknames. Maybe it was the fact that Harold L. always had an intimidating glint in his eyes. Or perhaps it was the scathing scold forever stuck on the tip of his tongue. Most likely, it was the way that Harold L.'s hair was severely parted right in the middle of his scalp. It was so dead center that many squabbled over whether or not Harold L. used a ruler to part his hair. 

He did. 

The only man who could ever control Harold L. was his son, James. This did not bode well for the future of a nation. Harold L. was concerned with just that, that the future of his nation bode very well indeed. 

In Harold L.'s mind, there were two threats hovering on the horizon, ready to gobble up wizarding England like the wolf in _Little Red Riding Hood_. The first (what big eyes you have!), was Lord Voldemort. The second (what big deficits you have!), was Soviet Russia. It seemed obvious to Harold L. that these two were linked together in an absoblutly-enormous-mumbo-jumbo-monolithic-Marxist-Bolshevik-world-wide-Communist-Death-Eater conspiracy. 

It seemed obvious to Sirius that Harold L. was as off his rocker as it was possible to be. He could not tell this to James, though. 

Harold L. held a rousing patriotic press conference in which he, much to James's chagrin, appeared in nothing but a bowler hat and a draped Union Jack. Despite his hair-raising attire, Harold L. called upon the people of Wizarding England to resist this absoblutly-enormous-mumbo-jumbo-monolithic-Marxist-Bolshevik-world-wide-Communist-Death-Eater threat. He compared it to a second Battle of Britain in which the "Citizens of this free empire must fight better and braver than ever before, and show those dirty Slavic pigs to rue the day they ever set their sights upon Britannia!" (::canned cheers!::)

Sirius thought it was futile to point out that the goal of Communism was absolute freedom and the main aim of the Death Eaters was absolute dictatorship. 

His friend Remus Lupin agreed, stating: "That man [Harold L.] needs to reread the _Communist Maifesto_." Sirius changed the subject. He had never read the _Communist Manifesto_. 

Harold L. proposed that a team of undercover Aurors head to the Soviet Union to unearth solid evidence of the worldwide-Communist-Death-Eater conspiracy. Naturally, James wanted the job. Naturally, Harold L. gave it to him. Naturally, Sirius was dragged along. The Blind leading the Blind. 

So much for the _Communist Maifesto_. 

----

If it wasn't for this story:

1. A bartender would still be alive. 

2. The KGB would have no idea that the Wizarding World even existed. 

3. Spunky Slavic Gnomes would not own a great deal of Eastern Siberia. 

and

4. Narcissa Vabka would be happily married to Lucius Malfoy. 

At least McCarthyism was good for something. 

----

If someone asked you to play Russian Roulette, what would you say?


	2. Things Have Changed

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Falling in love with the wife of your worst enemy if hazardous to your health **__**

A/N- Here's an unoffical glossary for Russian words in the text:

****

govn'uk- bastard (**govn'uky** is the plural form of this word)

****

shavala- whore/slut

more Russian Slang of the same color can be found at [_www.notam.uio.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Russian.html_][1]

**__**

Sovjetski Drustvo Earovnik (or S.D.E)- (to answer Moon's question, Sovjetski Drustvo Earovnik isn't Russian, its Slovenian. I don't speak either language, but I have a friend that has a Slovenian to English dictionary (god knows why :O) ), and I figured it was the nest best thing. The literal translation is the Soviet Society of Sorcerers) the Soviet Equivalent of the Ministry of Magic 

****

Sasha- is a guy's name in Russia

****

DISCLAIMER- I break a heck of a lotta copywrights in this chapter (all in the spirit of Communism mind you, we all share). I don't own Harry Potter to start, nor the Communist Manifesto (kinda ironic there's a copywright on that one). The lyrics interspersed throughout the text are from the song Walk On, by U2, which I don't own either. I don't own the Weakest Link nor a single one of the Roulette girls (kudos for anyone than can name where I stole them from). I don't own Joe the pimp either (more kudos if you can tell me where he is from). 

****

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: _Falling in love with the wife of your worst enemy is hazardous to your health. Not recommended for those with a history of broken hearts._   


__

in **SIRIUS's** _words_:

don't read this. 

c'mon. there has to be something better on the telly. go watch Anne Robinson hand out £100,000,000 sterling. or better yet, read the encyclopedia. learn something and make something of yourself. you aren't getting any younger. I'm not handing out any bloody diplomas here. 

there aren't going to be any absolutions. any reparations. any apologies... any smiles. this is one goddamn trail of tears. 

in case you're bloody slow today, I'll repeat it: don't read this. 

you don't wanna hear a sob story from a poor little boy who got his sad-ass heart broken 1500 miles from your cozy little fireplaces in the middle of a club that was boiling, a city that was freezing, and a way of life that may be already dead. 

go away. for your own good. I'm not making any allowances. 13 years in living hell killed all of my forgiveness and any of my vestigial hope in the human race. 

maybe Charles Darwin was right. maybe all we are is animals. it's dog eats dog, baby. and only the strong survive. 

__

I may be strong with you. put on the pretense of not giving a knut. telling you that no matter what, in spite of everything we try, nothing will ever be ok again. 

I know how wrong I am every time I hear her lie echoing in my head. 

a bitter lie. a sweet lie. a lie that try as I might, I can't ever let go:

i love you.

****

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Chapter One-- Twenty Years Ago or More, I Was Still a Young Man

__

The price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings. 

-The Counting Crows, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

__

Moscow, Russia

December 31, 1996

For the first time in his life, Sirius Black hesitated. His fingers brushed against the dark wood of the door, its slick grain sliding harmlessly across his glove. He bit his lip. Even now, he wasn't sure if he was doing the right thing… if there even was a right thing. 

"You goin' in or not, sir?" the doorman said in heavily accented English, his breath freezing into little puffs of white with every new word. He looked particularly frozen and hence irritable in his too-big glasses and threadbare penguin tuxedo. "_Govn'uk_," he whispered under his breath, shooting Sirius a particularly dirty look. 

Govn'uk. Bastard. Sirius may not have been to Russia for twenty years, but if there was one thing he remembered, it was his curses. He wheeled around to face the doorman, ready to give the man a few _govn'uky_ of his own. Then he paused. The porter wasn't any older than a kid, younger than Sirius himself had been when he had first come to the Russian Roulette. He was shivering, his frozen freckled nose just barely illuminated by the half-light of Moscow's street lamps. So instead of cursing the porter to kingdom come, Sirius gave the kid a sympathetic glance. If he was 16 and freezing his ass off while some old fogie hesitated in front of a door he wished to anything he could enter, he'd at least call the customer a _govn'uk, _if not worse, he thought remembering his own youthful misdeeds. "Yeah," he said, inhaling the freezing night air. "I'm going in." 

The Porter wiped his nose on the sleeve of his tuxedo and then said his favorite English word. "Tip?" 

Sirius had the strong inclination to sock the Porter in the jaw_,_ but there was something in his teenage gawkiness, a hint in the way his too-big glasses slipped down his frozen nose, a the touch of defiance in the kid's eyes that made him pause. In a way, the Porter hearkened back to Sirius's memories of James. Of himself. They had been so young then. What had happened… where had their youth gone?

Sirius reached into his pocket and pulled out a 200-ruble note. The kid needed it more than he ever would. "Buy yourself a coat," he said, slipping it to the Porter, knowing perfectly well that the kid would spend his newfound wealth on booze or hash. Then, before the kid could respond, he strode into the relative heat of the Roulette. And stopped. 

This is what he had been afraid of. 

The old club of his memories was gone. While he had been rotting away in Azkaban, the Roulette had reinvented herself from a seedy whorehouse to a posh restaurant, now oozing tangible wealth and respectability. He stared in unabashed horror at the chintzy chandeliers, fluffy red carpet, and sateen banner proclaiming _Le Club de la Russian Roulette_. He was betrayed. 

Steps halting, Sirius cursed the foolhardy notion of even returning to the Roulette after all these years. He should have known better, should have known his old club was no more when he saw a doorman and a red carpet outside. In the old days, the Roulette had been an underground club, trying desperately to hide herself from the authorities. Heart in his throat, Sirius took another step forward. They had all left him now: first Narcissa, then James, and now… now even the Roulette, the playground of his youth in those days when he had the freedom to be free and the carefree inclination to forget all responsibility, was only a fleeting memory. Those had been the days before prisons, before cells, before bars. The days when things still made sense, when there still seemed to be a method to the madness. The days when he had still been alive. 

It was just foolhardy to even begin to believe that he could gain access to his youth, his innocence, by returning to the club that had shattered everything. This was the brothel where he had first tasted betrayal, the bitter liquor that would govern most of his adult life. Its taste still lingered in his mouth. 

"Can I help you, Monsieur?" A stuffy maitre'd asked in affected French, grabbing Sirius's shoulder and shaking him from his reverie. The waiter's pencil-thin moustache twitching with every word. 

Sirius hesitated, half in the mind to just walk away from it all, from the new club, from the bitter taste of betrayal lingering on his lips, but mostly he just wanted escape from his own memories. But if Azkaban had taught him one thing, it was that the past never sets you free. "I want a table," he finally replied, purposefully in Russian. 

"We don't serve locals," the maitre'd replied, his moustache vibrating irritably. Sirius's disgust at the maitre'd was almost equal to the head waiter's apparent revulsion towards him. By locals, the maitre'd meant anyone not rich or powerful enough to gain entrance to the prestigious _Le Club de la Universal Elite_, a society of croquet matches and charity dinners, ruled over by those such as the Malfoys and the Rockefellers. By excluding locals, the Russian Roulette was turning her back on the dregs of Muscovite society, a rag-tag and threadbare group to which she had been a temple a mere twenty years before. 

"I'm from England," Sirius said, again in Russian. Five years ago, it would have been death to openly admit his nationality in what was then the Soviet Union. 

The matire'd gave Sirius a look of pure disgust and replied in his heavily accented French. "Do you have a reservation… Monsieur?" The Monsieur was not a title of respect, but so dripping in sarcasm that it was an underhanded blow at Sirius's dignity. 

Sirius ignored it. He wasn't in any mood to start a fight. "No," he said flatly, a smirk forming on his lips. 

"I'm afraid I can't admit you them," the matire'd said smugly. "If you'll just step this way, I'll show you to the door--" 

"Wait a moment!" Both Sirius and the matire'd spun around at the sound of the new voice. Sirius felt an instinctive wave of dread pass over him at the sight of the portly figure in a pinstriped suit and lime green bowler hat. "Mr. Black will dine with me, I insist." 

"Of course, Monsieur," the matire'd bowed respectfully though he his moustache twitched in a most rattled fashion. All in all, the waiter looked as if his Christmas had been cancelled. Sirius was pleased to see a definite sulky note in his retreat to the interior of _Le Club de la Russian Roulette_. 

"Mr. Black! I daresay, what a surprise!" Sirius found himself being spun around by the shoulders and forced into the grasp of a rather pudgy old man wearing expensive cologne. Sirius coughed hoarsely as the man let him go, trying to clear his head from the stench of the perfume. Sirius was again reminded of the veracity of James's old adage: _Never trust a man who wears cologne_. "What a splendiferous surprise!" the pudgy man guffawed again, chuckling at his non-existent wit.   


"Quite," Sirius said through a pained smile, trying to dodge another hug from the Minister of Magic. "What an... honor." Sirius had marginal respect for Cornelius Fudge, and an even smaller skill at hiding that fact.   


"Oh... what, what, Mr. Black! I daresay!" Fudge blustered through his moustache. "Congratulations on your recent acquittal. Pettigrew!" he gave a shallow laugh. "Who would have known! When was your trial, two months ago?"   


"Three and a half," Sirius corrected tersely. _And if I remember correctly, you stormed out of the courtroom in a huff when the jury read their not-guilty verdict, Minister._ An uncomfortable silence ensued as both Fudge and Sirius remembered their old enmity. Sirius would never be able to forgive the Minister for his time in Azkaban. Even after his acquittal, most wizards kept a safe distance between themselves and the ex-convict. For the first time in his life, Sirius could understand how Remus felt as pariah.   


"So where's your date, Mr. Black?" Fudge made another stab at resurrecting their quickly dying conversation.

"I'm alone," Sirius said, running his finger through a hole in the pocket of his overcoat.   


"Alone?" Fudge chuckled. "At the Russian Roulette?" It was all Sirius could do to keep himself from laughing aloud. Who was Fudge to trounce around and act he knew anything about the Russian Roulette, to pretend he knew everything there was to know about the beast of a club. Because the Roulette hadn't just a posh nightclub, it had been a way of life: unabashed freedom, reveling in the sheer joy of her decadence. Her motto: Live fast, die young. And this notion, this mantra, was as alien to Fudge as the new Roulette was to Sirius.   


"Alone at the Russian Roulette," Sirius echoed, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice.   


"Well," Fudge blathered. "Quite, quite, I say. I'm looking over the wife of a friend," he gave Sirius a conspiratorial wink. "He had important business to attend to and suggested that I take her out. She insisted upon the Roulette, so here we are!" he finished, clapping his hands together. "Or rather... here I am, she's fixing up her hose or powdering her nose, something of that ladylike wishy-washy nonsense, I daresay. Never quite saw the point of it myself. If you ask me, women spend more time getting ready to go out than in the actual going out at all. Must be horribly frustrating, I think I'd go mad if I spent all that time staring at myself in a mirror, what what? One's reflection can only hold one's interest for so long and then it becomes outright ridiculous. Don't you agree, Mr. Black?" 

"After 13 years in prison, I don't like mirrors much," Sirius said quietly, well aware of and well pleased with the discomfort he was causing the Minister. 

Fudge coughed nervously. "She won't keep us waiting long… she should be returning any moment, I believe––"   


Sirius rolled his eyes. Fudge was probably with the wife of some rich diplomat, a spoiled little ninny who had heard about the Russian Roulette through scandalous rumors, and wanted to stare at Moscow's underworld like a rare specimen. She'd see it as "exciting", like a little theme park, and she'd pretend, through her Prime Rib, she had experienced the Roulette, telling all her rich friends that she's slummed it in Moscow's most "scandalous" nightclub. Well let her keep her sugar-coated notions of the club. 

The Roulette he knew was dead, and she was reveling in its demise. And she didn't understand. She couldn't understand. It made him sick.   


Sirius gave Fudge a disgusted glance. The Minister was smiling vapidly, sweat glistening on his sagging jowls. Sirius didn't reply.   


Fudge didn't get the hint. "So what brings you to Moscow, Mr. Black?"   


"Oh you know me," Sirius said sarcastically. "Selling nuclear secrets to the Soviets." Sirius was actually in Russia on business for Dumbledore, but he'd be damned if he told Fudge that.   


"Well," Fudge smiled blandly, the true meaning of Sirius's words escaping him. "I heard those nuclears were all the rage nowadays––"  


__

Fat hypocrite. "What brings you to Moscow, Minister?" Sirius interrupted suddenly.   


"Er..." Fudge pulled at his collar nervously, then lowered his tone to a whisper. "Well I can't quite go into it with all these Muggles around, but it is… Ministry business, of course. The Russian Gnomes are demanding most favored race trading status and of course we can't give it to them, the little blighters, they don't understand how upset the Danish Merfolk would get. But here's the real ticket," he blathered, "the blasted little gnome buggers are threatening to cut off all of the oil again like they did in the 70s. They have me in quite a fix–– Ah!" Fudge broke off, looking relieved. "What's this I see? Back from the mirror, powdered and primped! Well, Mr. Black, here she is!"  


Sirius spun around, expecting to see the pampered spouse of some aristocrat, reeking of perfume and glowing with reverse aging spells. 

__

Love

The sides of his mouth twitched. Fickle, fickle fate, how she loved to play games with mortals. This night was irony incarnate. 

__

its not the easy thing

It was _her_. Her features: chipped of ice, her blonde curls: floating around her head like a halo. Her cold blue eyes didn't even register recognition. The sides of his mouth twitched even more. He knew that inside, his little ice princess was melting. 

He got a sick sort of satisfaction from that. Last time it had been her that had torn his heart into shreds. 

__

the only baggage you can't bring is

Fudge remained oblivious. He drew the woman towards him and gave her an affectionate pat on the shoulder. Sirius saw her flinch as Fudge's hand wrapped itself around her waist. "Mr. Black, I don't believe you've met Narcissa Malfoy." 

Sirius laughed. Fudge looked somewhat unnerved by his reaction. Narcissa didn't so much as twitch, her polite smile seemed to be pasted on. 

__

love. it's not the easy thing.

"No," Sirius said, his voice little more than a hiss. "We haven't met." His eyes flicked towards to Narcissa, gauging how she would react to the lie. Her face was blank, her dead eyes stared at him without really seeing him at all. "I knew someone like Mrs. Malfoy once though," he said, his voice a forced calm. "She's dead now." 

"I… I'm sorry to hear that," Fudge blustered. 

"Not as sorry as I was," Sirius whispered. "But you can only grieve so long." 

"How true, how true," Fudge chuckled, rocking back and forth on his heel nervously. 

"How odd," Sirius said, addressing Narcissa for the first time in eighteen years. "You look just like your husband." 

She didn't move. 

Like the Roulette, Narcissa seemed only a shadow of her former self. Cleaner maybe, more respectable yes, but still a poor imitation of his memories. 

__

the only baggage you can bring is all that you can't

Standing there, staring into her cold empty gaze, Sirius wondered why he had even returned to _Le Club de le Russian Roulette_ after all these years_. _

Then it hit him. 

He had never really left. 

__

leave behind.  


----

__

…and if the darkness should keep us apart…

Moscow, U.S.S.R

December 31, 1979

Once upon a time, in Moscow, there was a floo-port. 

The nicest adjectives that can be applied to this transportation hub were "gray" and "well-used". On very very good days "barely-tolerable" was also applicable. 

The floo-port had first been built in the mid 1930s, when Josef Stalin suddenly decided to construct facilities for his people. Maybe he thought he could save his soul if he punched off a couple of hospitals, office buildings, and floo-ports. Stalin was wrong. It would take a heck of a lot more to keep him from hell.

The Josef Stalin Memorial Floo-Port oozed the essence of the motivation used to build it: absolute futility. In the barest physical rudimental, the floo-port was an eyesore: an incredibly ugly, utilitarian, gray rectangle with thousands of fireplaces lining its walls. On every fireplace's mantle was a small, framed, and state-funded photograph of the floo-port's namesake, and, in all actuality, the only man who had gotten any pleasure from it. The floo-port's staff purposefully ignored how often these portraits were defaced. 

Wizards from Bulgaria to Burkina Faso passed through the gray and well-used confines of the Josef Stalin Memorial Floo Port, jumping out one of the many fireplaces, and as quickly as they could, up the next. No one liked to stay in the Memorial Floo-port very long. In fact, nine out of every ten visitors to the port reached the same conclusion about it. 

They said, quite firmly, that it was the scab of the universe. 

A scab is something thoroughly ugly, repulsive, and dirty, but sadly enough, inexcusably necessary. But this damnable usefulness doesn't make one accept the scab any more. One just wants to pick at the bloody thing and get it off of one's skin A.S.A.P., but if one does succeed, one's cut reopens and the whole horrid scab-process repeats itself, much to one's chagrin. 

This ugly, repulsive, and dirty Muscovite floo-port was the scab of the universe. 

In other words, it was damnably necessary.

James was the sort of person who read a book on the toilet seat. And not just any book, he sat there for hours on end, memorizing the encyclopedia. He often said, to any one who would listen that his goal was to learn two new facts every day, but to Sirius it seemed like Prongs memorized at last twenty. James was full of useless information, from the name of the official currency of the small island nation of Vanuatu (the vatu) or the exact genus name for the common garden chipmunk _(sciuridae_). 

Lily often got jealous, accusing James of never having any time for her because he split his days exclusively between the Quiddich field and the encyclopedia. 

James would laugh and say there were only so many hours in the day. 

And his laugh was so beautiful that somehow Lily managed to forgive him and let him sweep her off her feet, encyclopedia fixation and all. 

It wasn't any wonder that Lily got swept off her feet so much. James was everyone's favorite: Lily's, Peter's, Remus's, and even Sirius's. It was the way that he smiled at you, like you were the only person in the world, it was the way he was never complicated or angst ridden or filled with hidden motivation. It was the way that he was utterly comfortable in his own skin. James was James, what you say was exactly what you got. He was like a slice of warm apple pie, epitomizing all that was good and wholesome and right with the world. 

James brought out the best in everyone he met, and they all loved him for it. 

And then… there was Sirius. 

Tall, dark, and undeniably handsome, he was the king of wicked barbs and mercutial sentiments. One day late in the seventh year, Professor McGonagall had been particularly rattled after being put through her paces by the Marauders for the umpteenth time that year. Her strict face red with fury she had snapped, "Mr. Black-- you have a line for everything!" 

Sirius had just smiled coolly and nodded his head. "Thank you, Professor." 

He had gotten a detention for that one, but it didn't really matter. Trouble followed Sirius around like a shadow and he was more than used to his mischievous bedmate. 

Sirius brought out the worst in all of the people he met. He got them in touch with their own darker natures. 

And they loved him for it. 

James and Sirius, arguably alter-egos, and yet and inseparable as twins. One was the son of the Minister of Magic, bred in a world of privilege and wealth, the other a fast-talking muggle-born whit from the slums of Liverpool. 

Sirius used to say that his first cousin was Paul McCartney. It was pure poppycock, but he managed to convince the half of Hogwarts that had actually heard of the Beatles. They pressed him almost daily for signed photographs and countless questions like: "Wings is all well and fine, but when will the Beatles be getting back together? That will be the day, eh?" 

Sirius answered everything with a smile. It was the general consensus that he could convince anyone of anything if they stood still long enough. Lies were his business. 

Maybe that's why James's father hated "that Black boy". He was the arrogant little snit that led his saintly son down the primrose path into the thousands of scrapes that made the Marauders legendary in the hearts of Hogwarts pranksters. 

Sirius _was_ a bad influence on James, he himself bragged of it often, but neither of the boys cared. James made Sirius fell good and Padfoot made Prongs feel bad. Each gave the other a little of what he lacked within himself. 

And they loved each other for it. 

So that's why Sirius, whining outwardly, dropped all his business in England and followed James half way across the world on his harebrained mission to Russia without so much as a second thought. It was for James that he put up with Harold L.'s brainless scheme, for James that he traveled 4,000 miles from his home, and for James that he was now standing in the middle of the Josef Stalin Memorial Floo-port. 

Not that James was in any sort of mood for thanking Sirius today. He was even in no spot to think about opening the encyclopedia, when the cold hard fact was that he couldn't even get his trunk out of the fire. 

"We're being watched." 

"What?" James was less than enthralled by Sirius's drivel as he began trying to tug his trunk out of one of the many too-small fireplaces in the Josef Stalin Memorial Floo-Port. On the other hand, Sirius leaned casually against the mantle, doing nothing in particular. The skin on the back of his neck prickled as if thousands of eyes were focused on him and him alone. He shivered. 

"We're being watched," Sirius repeated, taking a long drag of his Señor Skaavara's Smokeless Cigarette (the easy way to quit!). "I can feel it." 

James made a noise not unlike the moan of a wounded hippogriff as he gave his trunk a particularly futile tug. It didn't so much as budge. "You're going to be feeling something else if you don't lend me a hand." 

Sirius pulled halfheartedly at the trunk. Almost instantly it fell free of the fireplace and onto James's foot, causing him to let loose a string of quite colorful and creative curses. 

"You're gonna be feeling something else if you mess with me," Sirius paraphrased, as he smirked at his irritated friend. James heaved the trunk off of his floor, shooting Sirius an incredibly dirty look all the while. "What?" 

"Give me that," James said, pulling Sirius's smokeless cigarette from his mouth. 

"Why?" Sirius said as James stuck the fag between his teeth. "You don't even smoke." 

"I'm going to start trapped here with you," James growled as he gazed around the dirty floo-port with a look of utter disgust. "Is all of Moscow this goddamn ugly?" Snorting angrily, James tossed the cigarette onto the port's already littered floor. It burned itself out on the graying linoleum, dissolving into a tiny, resentful puff of ash. 

Sirius didn't respond to James's question. The trunk incident had put James into a volatile mood Sirius would rather not provoke by volunteering an answer to Prong's rhetorical question about the beauty of Moscow's main public floo-port. James wasn't really expecting an response anyhow. "Who do you think that is?" Sirius asked, swiftly changing the subject. He jerked his thumb at a photograph hanging over their fireplace. It was of a stiff looking man with a bottlebrush moustache that made him look rather like a walrus. The photograph's bulbous nose twitched angrily under Sirius's piercing stare.

James gave Sirius a look of utter disgust. "You're kidding me." 

"No, seriously," Sirius said, making a particularly rude gesture at the man in the picture. If looks could kill, the photograph would have struck Sirius dead where he stood. "Who is it?" 

"And you say my father doesn't know anything about Communism," James made an exasperated noise. "That's Josef Stalin." 

"Who?" 

James rolled his eyes. "Didn't you pay any attention in History of Magic?" 

"To my knowledge, Prongs," Sirius said, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Limited as it may be, you and Moony are the only ones who ever listened to anything Professor Binns had to say." 

"C'mon," James shook his head, but Sirius was relived to see the trace of a smile on his lips. "The guards are staring at us. We better go through Customs before we're arrested." 

"Oh don't worry about that," Sirius said blithely, smirking at his friend. "Your father could bail us out." 

"Bail _me_ out," James corrected pointedly. "After you blew up his office I doubt he'd be too eager to fork it out for you." 

"It was an accident," Sirius smirked at the memory. It had been one of his finer moments...

"You know as well as I do that it was completely intentional," James said, noticing Sirius's grin. "Where's your bag?" he said suddenly, noticing for the first time Sirius's lack of luggage. 

"I don't have one. I thought I'd just live out of your case," Sirius gave James's trunk an appraising glance. "You pack enough for both of us."

"Mooch." 

"Mummy's boy."   


"Ouch," James said sarcastically, pulling his wand and pointing it at the trunk to levitate it. "_Wingardium Levosia_--" 

BOOM! A noise like the crack of a whip jarred Sirius almost completely out of his skull as he found himself rushing quickly through the air. The Josef Stalin Memorial Floo-Port dissolved into nothingness as he slammed face-first into a long wooden table. Dazed, Sirius lifted his head up to find himself seated in a very old, ugly, nondescript office with no visible windows or doors. James, looking equally battered, was beside him. A sudden pain between his eyes made Sirius gingerly reach his hand to his face. His nose was bleeding freely, twisted at an odd angle. 

"Welcome to the _Sovjetski Drustvo Earovnik_," a voice barked from behind them. "Congratulations. Its your first day in Moscow and you've already managed to piss off the S.D.E. You sad little _govn'uky_," wheeling around Sirius saw a tall thin man with the exact grin one would find on a crocodile leaning over their table. He tried to leap out of his chair, but his feet were magically chained to the legs of the table. Angrily, Sirius bit his lip so hard that it bled. 

"Excuse me?" Sirius said. The Lingus charms that allowed him to speak Russian were by no means perfect, and he didn't recognize the word _govn'uky_. There was something about the way the stranger said it that led him to infer that _govn'uky _ was no compliment. 

The Soviet chuckled to himself. Sirius didn't seem to find their situation remotely funny. Neither, it seemed, did James. "Just who do you think you are?" he yelled angrily in accented Russian, leaping from his seat as far as his chains would allow. "What right have you to take us away from the floo-port! Where is my luggage, and for that matter where are we--" 

The crocodile man smiled nastily. He gently placed a knarled hand on each of James's shoulders and pushed him hard. With a slight cry James allowed himself to be placed back into his seat. "No charms without authorization," the stranger hissed, removing his hands from James's shoulders and wiping them on his robes as if he had touched something nasty. 

"What are you talking about?" James spluttered, looking particularly like his father. 

"No charms, potions, hexes, spells or magical enchantments of any sort are allowed without written authorization from the State." Something about the way the word State ran across the stranger's lips made the capital S quite clear. "They are a potential danger to the unity and stability of Mother Russia, not to mention discriminatory to the common proletariat."

"Discriminatory?" James looked as if he had swallowed his broomstick. "Spells?" 

The stranger looked down at James over his long, thin, crooked nose. "The mutation that allows magic is not universal among the people of Mother Russia. If magic is encouraged, the unity of our State will be threatened. We cannot allow such splintering between the mutated and the common proletariat to occur." 

"Bullsh--" 

The stranger cut him James off, extending his hand. "I am going to have to break your wand." 

"What?" James looked almost purple. 

"Be thankful that's all I will do. Second time offenders do not get off so easily," the stranger hissed, his crocodile grin fading. "No more talk!" he abruptly barked, "I need your wand, unless you have authorization papers." 

"Now just wait a bloody moment--" James began. 

"The papers?" The wizard cut in, drumming his knarled fingers on the hard wood of his table. 

"And where are your papers, Comrade?" Sirius said slowly, taking his hand from his bloody nose and leaning over the table. He couldn't quite say what made him challenge the Soviet, maybe the fact that James looked angry enough to commit first-degree murder. Perhaps it was the nasty patronizing glint in the Russian's eye that spurred him on. But, most likely it was his utter scorn for anyone telling him what to do. He'd beat the stranger at his own game or be damned in the process. 

The Soviet's eyes narrowed as he lowered his wand hand. "What?" 

"That was a blatant and shameful charm bringing us here," Sirius sneered, trying his best to look imposing. With blood dripping down his lip, it wasn't too hard. "A transport spell, I believe?" Sarcastically he added. "If I don't see your authorization papers, I'm afraid I'm going to have to break your wand." 

"You have no authority," the wizard hissed angrily. 

"See, that's where you're wrong, Comrade," Sirius said smugly. Silently, he thanked Remus for his long mind-numbing lectures in Soviet ideology. "Expressly stated by Karl Marx in the _Communist Manifesto_ is that in a communist society just like this one, everything is owned by the state and shared equally between its people. Therefore," he took a breath, "your authority is my authority, since as good comrades, we all share." 

"Sirius..." James hissed in a warning tone.

"What nonsense is this?" the wizard said dangerously, his face blowing up like an overgrown puffer-fish. 

"And," Sirius continued, leaning over the table. "Going in that same train of thought, your authorization papers are ours also, since they don't really belong to you in the first place. Therefore no wands need to be broken and we can all go free." He gave the Soviet a hopeful smile. 

"You're in way above your head, Limey." the stranger hissed in a most unfriendly fashion. "How about, your life is mine to dispose of... freely." 

"I think," Sirius said, meeting the Soviet's murderous glare. "You're just trying to divert the conversation to avoid showing us your non-existent authorization papers." 

A nasty smirk hovered on the stranger's lips as he reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a packet of papers. Wordlessly, he threw them across the table towards Sirius and James.

Sirius didn't move. Seeing the tiny mess of forms, with their official looking red seal and curly calligraphy, he knew Padfoot and Prongs were royally screwed. So he sat frozen as James reached forward and gripped the Soviet's documents, deftly flicking them open. Sirius was amazed at how cool he seemed, mere seconds from impending doom. "Your name is Vladimir Ulyanov?" James said suddenly to the Russian, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose as he stared at the documents. 

"Yes," the stranger hissed, his pinched face contorting. "You are questioning the authenticity of my documents, no?" 

"No, no," James said hastily, pushing Ulyanov's papers away. Sirius was surprised and a tad bit alarmed to see a smile on his face. "My father told me to keep an eye out for a man named Vladimir Ulyanov who was a British Informant in the S.D.E. He said you were expecting us." At the blank look on Ulyanov's face, he continued. "We're the Aurors. From the British Ministry of Magic…" 

"How can I trust you?" Ulyanov hissed, his pale gray eyes narrowing in suspicion. 

"How can we trust _you_?" Sirius said coolly, leaning back in his chair. He felt a sort of subtle satisfaction now that Ulyanov was on the defensive and they held all the dice. "You could be double-crossing all of us." 

Ulyanov's haggard face broke into a sudden grin. It looked as unwelcome on his features as snow in the Sahara. "Very good," he said, smiling so that all of his teeth showed. "You have no illusions about my trustworthiness. Very astute." 

"We also have no illusions towards your flattery, Mr. Ulyanov," Sirius said quietly, the sides of his mouth twitching into a small smirk at the look of shock on Ulyanov's face. 

Ulyanov held his hands up in mock defeat. "Touché, as the French say, eh?" 

Sirius didn't laugh. Neither did James. 

Ulyanov dropped his pasted-on smile, and almost instantly his face reverted to its nasty smirk. "Which one of you is the Minister of Magic's son?" 

James opened his mouth to respond, but Sirius was too quick. "Me," he said, shooting James a look. He flashed Ulyanov what he hoped was his best sheepish grin as he flicked a strand of black hair from his eyes. Unlike James, he wasn't blind to the hungry glint in Ulyanov's stare. He saw the way that the informant looked at them, like a cat at a mouse, and he instinctively knew that British spy or not, Ulyanov was not to be trusted. If Ulyanov was going to go after anyone it would be the son of the Minister of Magic, and he wasn't about to put James at that kind of risk. "I'm Sirius Potter," he said broadly, extending his hand. 

Ulyanov didn't take it. He gave Sirius a cold stare as a patronizing smile curved across his face. "Well, lets hope you're here on merit and not just your name, Mr. _Potter_," he sneered. Sirius never thought he had heard anyone fit so much scorn into two syllables. "Who are you?" Ulyanov barked, turning to James. 

"I'm James… James Black," James said, shooting Sirius a venomous glance. He wasn't about to contradict his friend, but he still looked a few shades north of livid. Sirius knew he'd have hell to pay next time he was alone with Prongs. 

"Welcome to Moscow," Ulyanov said, laughing hollowly as he gestured around the dank S.D.E. office, cobwebs hanging from every corner, paint peeling on the walls, the very air infiltrated with an aura of distrust and despair. "A ghost town of nine million. So much," he shot Sirius a look, "for Communism, eh?" 

"Is the whole city like… this?" James said, staring around the dusty office. His voice was filled with palpable disgust. 

"What a welcome, hm?" Ulyanov said, leaning over the table towards the fledgling Aurors. "And, for future reference, the S.D.E would really break your wand for performing magic without a permit. It's your luck that I was on duty at this moment. Who knows? Maybe you're meant to succeed here." Ulyanov said it in such a tone that made it quite clear that he did not believe this himself. 

"Why would they break my wand?" James said, his face twinged with a sort of naïve disbelief. 

Again, Ulyanov laughed hollowly. "Why?" he spat. "Why not? They'd break it because they can. They'd break it because it would make them stronger than you, even just for an instant, and to them, that means everything." 

"This isn't the sort of place that welcomes visitors," James said quietly, meeting Ulyanov's calculating gaze with his own sincere one. 

"No, it isn't," Ulyanov said, his voice barely a hiss. "Not unless you know where to get a welcome." 

"And where is that?" Sirius said, unable to keep the scorn from his voice. 

"Oh…" Ulyanov closed his eyes slowly, and a funny, drugged look slid across his features. "Oh… let me take you to a place where the drinks are stronger, the nights are longer, and the girls just a little bit looser. A place that can give you a welcome, and a place that helps me forget… everything."

Before Sirius could open his mouth to agree or protest, or even decide on either of these options, Ulyanov extended one gnarled hand and for the second time that day, Padfoot's world turned upside down. Sirius felt an abrupt, merciless lurch as the ugly cold Soviet office dissolved and then reformed into something completely… different. 

"The S.D.E.'s gonna screw you over for that transport spell," Sirius hissed as his feet hit solid ground, his hands clutching his stomach as he doubled up. 

"Ah, but you forget, Mr. Potter, I have authorization papers," Ulyanov said, his face etched eerily in neon strobe light. "Welcome," he said, his piggy eyes glinting with excitement. "To the Russian Roulette." Ulyanov turned his gaze away from Sirius to tip his hat at a man sheathed in leather nonchalantly against the back wall. "Hey Joe, whadda ya know?" he said. The pimp nodded back. After that, everything seemed to happen at once. 

Sirius would have classified as it as an explosion, except this bomb was not one of gunpowder, but legs and arms and lips, all lusting after their counterpart on him. 

A slim blonde with red streaks in her hair twined her arms around his neck. "_Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir_?" she purred. 

"Stay away from Lady Marmalade," a smoky voice slid into his ear. Sirius turned around to see a tall Spaniard wearing knee-high leopard boots and blue plastic pants slide her hands into his hair. "Take _me _out tonight," she positively howled, sounding more like Remus in his wolf state than any kind of seductress. 

Alarmed, Sirius started to back away slowly, the blonde wench still whispering nonsensical French into his ear. He gazed around the Roulette, mouth hanging unabashedly open. A couple was snogging in rhythm in the middle of the dance floor. The people around them seemed completely unfazed, grinding to the loud beat of techno synths. 

Sirius's eyes lingered upon two men, one reached into his cocktail and pulling out an olive which he slipped into his companions mouth. The other mans lips lingered upon his friend's hands a little too long and Sirius couldn't tear his eyes away as the two's lips met. No one else even seemed to notice. 

A woman, tattooed head to foot, was standing on a raised dais on the far side of the club. The wall behind her was covered with random strips of neon light, arranged into what looked like a fluorescently-radioactive Jackson Polluck painting. As for the tattooed woman herself, she was leading the club in a new year's eve treat: her own disco rendition of _Auld Lang Sin_, with lyrics to match its altered title. The clubbers stopped grinding long enough to cheer her on. 

This left only one through firmly ingrained in Sirius's mind: This was no Three Broomsticks…

"Kiss me, Mein Herr, just don't tell momma," a brunette in a top hat snarled, her Cockney accent catching him by surprise. Before he could even begin to react, she had elbowed the blonde out of the way and latched her mouth onto his. 

"Sally!" Sirius tried desperately to catch his breath as Ulyanov pulled the Cockney brunette off him. "Its far too early for that my dear." 

"Vlad," she smiled, running a painted finger over his lips. "It's never too early to have a little fun."

Ulyanov shook his head slowly, and Sirius was amazed to see a small smile on his lips. "Don't scare the Englishmen, Sally, as a personal favor to me. That goes for you too, Roxanne!" he barked at a girl who had James halfway under the nearest table. 

James for one looked rather disappointed as he crawled out from under the table, his glasses askew and the top few buttons of his robe undone. "What?" he said at Sirius's smirk. 

"Just thinking how Lily would react," he smiled, grin widening at the look of horror in his friend's eyes. 

"Sirius! You wouldn't!" James said angrily, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. 

"Nah… she'd flay me alive too," he said, winking at a girl in a red catsuit. She peered over the shoulder of the man she was dancing with to get a better glance at Sirius.

"Oops, you've done it again," James smirked as the girl returned Sirius's attention with a suggestive smile.

"Potter!" Ulyanov's hand reached out of nowhere, aborting Sirius's plan to pursue catsuit-girl. He practically dragged them across the club towards the bar, pushing Sirius and then James into stools. Ulyanov nodded at the bartender, an scruffy old man who couldn't have looked more out of place in the young, vibrant Roulette. "Sasha, give me two of the house specialty. And use Smirnoff, I don't want any of that Stoli shit" Ulyanov snapped. The bartender gave Ulyanov a tired smile and before Sirius could so much as blink Sasha slid two cocktails towards them. "Stay here, I don't want you to get lost. " Ulyanov barked, turning back to Sirius. He was about to make some snide comment about not needing a baby sitter, when Ulyanov pushed one of the cocktails under his nose, while handing one to James "Screwdriver, sans orange juice," Ulyanov said. "Drink." The command in his voice left no room for argument. 

The liquid slid down his throat, burning at first, then turning into a full out fire. Almost instantly Sirius knew that whatever he was drinking, it wasn't vodka. But by that time, he was too far-gone to care. His world began to swim before his eyes as his lids slowly drooped. After one sip, he had the undeniable feeling of being completely plastered. Vaguely, Sirius heard Ulyanov's voice from above him, sounding very far away. "Should keep them out of the way… watch them, Sasha… Diablo will hear… photographs…" 

He sensed Ulyanov moving away from the bar, and felt Sasha's sympathetic hand on his head. "You're properly plastered there, my friend," he said, sounding perfectly amicable. "How about another drink, eh?"

----

…and if the daylight feels like it's a long way off…

Cordoba, Spain

December 31, 1979

The Minotaur snorted, its nostrils flaring as it pawed the ground in angry excitement, tiny clouds of dust swirling about its bare feet.

__

Minotaur-fighting is believed to have originated circa 2000 BC, in the grand palace of Knossos at Crete. After the fall of the Cretan civilization, wizards from around the surrounding islands shipped their beloved sport all across the Mediterranean, where it was embraced by the Magical peoples of Greece, and then Rome. Finally Minotaur-fighting making a home for itself in Spain, where bullfighting, the Muggle version of this sport, was already a national obsession. [excerpt from: Quidditch to Quodpot: A Brief History of Wizarding Sport]

But the wizards gathering in the whitewashed amphitheater just outside Cordoba, Spain, couldn't give a hippogriff's tail feathers about the history of their beloved national sport. They had just come to watch a match between the Minotaur, starved for days so that it its murderous instincts were amplified by hunger, and a legendary matador known only as _Diablo_. 

What was there to be said about Diablo? He was more than a mere Minotaur fighter, he was a hero… a messiah. No one knew where Diablo came from, he had just appeared in the ring one day in a _traje de luces, _the traditional embroidered suit that was as much a part of bull and Minotaur-fighting as the infamous red cape. Of course there were thousands of rumors about Diablo's origins. One legend said that he was abandoned at birth in the wilds of Crete, and he had been reared by the wild Minotaurs there, only to turn on his foster family when he was old enough to hold a sword. Where else but from the Minotaurs themselves, the Spanish wizards whispered, would Diablo learn the merciless bloodlust that he was famous for in the ring. Other stories spoke of a childhood in a jail cell, born to a mother on Death Row. Surrounded by Dementors from the first moment he opened his eyes, the young Diablo had not learned the meaning of the word emotion, and was therefore able to slay countless Minotaurs without feeling a thing. The most popular of all of these rumors, however, was that Diablo was not born at all. The wizards of Spain whispered that he was the devil in physical incarnation, ready to bring about the Armageddon. Devil, convict, or orphan the wizards watched Diablo nonetheless, fascinated and repulsed by his murderous actions in the Minotaur ring. He killed like no matador before him, relishing in the blood and carnage he created, often decimating and mutilating the corpses of the Minotaurs he slew in front of the horrified crowd. And, not knowing quite why themselves, they loved him for it. 

Truth be told, there was no solid truth about Diablo, he defied all reason. He came out of nowhere, killed with cold detachment, and then disappeared into thin air as soon as the match was over. 

The Minotaur snorted, its nostrils flaring as it pawed the ground in angry excitement, tiny clouds of dust swirling about its bare feet. 

Diablo entered the ring, his boots digging into the duty surface of the arena. He commanded the ring like a deity and try as they might, the watching wizards were unable to wrench their eyes away from the matador. An overwhelming cheer rose from the crowd squeezed into the tiny whitewashed amphitheater. 

A portly wizard serving as the Master of Ceremonies held up his hands for quiet. "Silencio!" he bellowed in his magically amplified voice. Even so, it took several minutes for the crowd to stop shouting Diablo's name. As for Diablo himself, his face was chipped of ice. The king of matadors stood there, impassive, not even hearing the cheers of his fans. The portly wizard cleared his throat at turned to the wildly expectant crowd. "_¡En el nombre de Jesús Cristo, deje la lucha comenzar!_" Diablo spat on the ground at this appeal to the Almighty. This sudden gesture was enough to send the crowd into wild screeches: some of anger, some of adoration, and some just for screeching's sake.

Scornful and aloof, Diablo ignored them and turned his view to the Minotaur. He licked his lips. 

The Minotaur was truly a disgusting beast, its bull's head twitching in what appeared to be some sort of frenzied seizure its bloodshot eyes nearly popped from its skull. Diablo wouldn't be surprised if the monster was rabid. Beneath the Minotaur's bovine head was the body of a man, muscles rippling like liquid steel under tanned skin. Despite its vaguely humanoid appearance, the Minotaur was truly a beast, lacking the capacity for human speech and civilized interaction. Diablo saw it as his solemn duty to rid the world of such half-blood filth as the Minotaur, so close to humanity, and yet so far. Besides, he liked the feeling of sliding his sword into warm flesh, watching the pained look in beast's eyes as his cursed life ebbed away.

Slowly, Diablo reached a hand to his shoulder, unfurling the red matador's cape he had draped across his back. With a deft flick of the hand, he extended it, waving it just in front of the maddened Minotaur's view. The Minotaur lowered his disgusting head, froth and spittle dripping from his hairy jowls, and charged. 

Just in time, Diablo twirled the cloak away, spinning on his toes like a ballet dancer as the Minotaur breezed past him, his horns lowered. They gleamed like twin daggers in the hot Spanish sun. 

By now, Diablo was oblivious to the screams of the crowd. He dropped the cloak on the dusty arena floor, pulling a sword from the scabbard at his hip. Light and flimsy, his blade looked as if it could do little harm to the enormous Minotaur, though Diablo had proven this postulate wrong on many an occasion. 

The Minotaur growled, a long unearthly sound that originated in the bottom of its throat and seemed to personify every ounce of anger and pain that had ever passed through this godforsaken world in its 4 billion years of existence. The cry would have brought weaker men than Diablo to his knees. But he just laughed it off, twirling his sword between his pale white fingers. They didn't call him the son of the devil for nothing. 

Beast or not, the Minotaur seemed to understand this insult to its dignity. He dug his heels into the ground and rushed at Diablo, his horns lowered. The beast's vulnerable torso wasn't anywhere in range of his sword so Diablo dropped it on the ground, and instead of running in the opposite direction, took a hold of the beasts horns. 

The Minotaur let out a cry of fury as Diablo vaulted easily onto his back, like the Cretans so many thousands of years ago. Doing a flip, he wrapped his hands over the animal's eyes, pressing the sides of his knees into the beast's temples at the same time. Furious, the monster dropped to the ground, bucking and screeching in a futile attempt to rid itself of its unwanted passenger. Long bands of spittle swung from the Minotaur's lips like lassos. Diablo ignored its hysterics. Calmly, he let go of the Minotaur's head and reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a smile knife that was no larger than his thumbnail. Fitting the blade carefully between his fingers, Diablo bent down over the terrified beast, digging his knees flush against its head. 

"_Adiós_," he whispered, as he dug the blade into the soft flesh of the Minotaur's throat. The animal opened his mouth to let loose a death cry, but his vocal cords were severed and all that came out was empty air… and blood. 

Diablo smiled as he ran his fingers in the warm liquid, the soft flesh just a hairsbreadth away from life. 

He laughed. Not bothering to wipe off his dripping fingers, he reached over to where his sword lay abandoned on the dust and picked it up, driving in deep into the Minotaur's exposed torso. The crowd screamed in delight as their blood boiled. A wash of adrenaline had buried their natural revulsion towards violence and gore, causing them into the mindless destruction of another living creature. And Diablo was the gateway to these darker feelings. Diablo was the key. 

He smiled to himself. The mob was shouting his name. How quaint. 

"Señor!" A lone figure was hurrying across the floor of the amphitheater; his black wizard's robes making him stick out against the pure white of the arena like sore thumb. "Señor Malfoy?" 

A wave of excited whispers rushed over the rapt crowd. Their hero, the mysterious Diablo, finally had a name. 

Diablo whirled around, his silvery blonde hair gleaming white under the Spanish sun. He recognized the figure in black as one of his many butlers, a terribly thin man with an aquiline nose and a penchant for trembling. "What?" he hissed at the quivering servant who had dared to enter _his_ ring, _his_ sanctum, _his_ temple of death and destruction. 

"There…" the man's voice quivered as he paled under Lucius Malfoy's piercing gaze. "There is an urgent messenger from Moscow waiting in your office. You must meet him immediately." 

"Who are you to tell me what I must and must not do!" Malfoy yelled, pulling his bloody sword from the corpse of the Minotaur. 

"Please sir… I…" 

Raising the blade, Malfoy struck his servant across the face. The man fell to his knees and lay quivering in a tiny pile of limbs and robes and blood. For the second time that day, Malfoy spat in disgust. Kicking the corpse of the Minotaur, kicking the terrified form of his servant, he stormed out of the ring, cries of _"Malfoy! Malfoy!"_ following him all the way home.

----

__

…and if your glass heart should crack…

9.1 meters. 

That translates into 3 meters square--

which is roughly equivalent to:

1. a small bathroom

2. one of the earliest computers

3. ¾ of a sportscar

AND

the amount of living space granted to each person living in the Soviet Union. (NB- Even this was not granted. As late as 1979, in some parts of the USSR, as many as 60 people were forced into tenement homes built for 10.) 

your entire world. 

3 meters square. 

"Working men of all countries, unite! You have nothing to loose but your chains. You have a world to win!" 

-excerpt from the Communist Manifesto

----

…and for a second you turn back…

Moscow, U.S.S.R.

"Which one is he?" 

Ulyanov grabbed the disinterested girl by the chin. She was halfway through pulling off her fake eyelashes and gave a disgruntled cry of pain as he pulled her away from the bar. "That one you little _shalava_!" Angrily, he pointed across the club to where the son of the Minister of Magic sat, nursing a vodka martini, and laughing at something his spectacled friend had said. 

"Easy, Vlad, easy," she scowled, wrenching her chin from his grasp, "Do I play the Romonov act?" 

"No," Ulyanov said after a moment of consideration. "This one is a real prick. He wouldn't even know what the hell you were talking about." 

"Fair enough," she said, flipping her blonde hair from her eyes. "If he's such a prick, why are you going to all this trouble?" 

"Because he's a useful prick," Ulyanov said cryptically, eyeing the Minister's son from across the club. 

The _shavala_ gave Ulyanov an appraising glance. "Who are you working for this time, Vlad?" she said, the faintest trace of mocking in her tone. 

Ulyanov's eyes narrowed. "Don't ask questions." 

"You know my fee," she said, running her foot up his leg suggestively. 

Ulyanov gripped her wrist, wrenching it hard. "No games. Not now, this is all too dangerous, too delicate! One wrong move and it will all come toppling down, poppet. Toppling down on _you_." 

She wrenched her wrist from his grasp; smile wiped clear off her face. "What's in it for me?" She growled. 

"If I play my cards right, Diablo will be paying us a visit tomorrow," Ulyanov whispered, leaning towards her. 

She looked away from him, her gaze traveling to the Roulette's single window, where a single sliver of night-sky was visible. "He can give me what I want," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "What _I _want…" 

"If you give him what he wants," Ulyanov countered, breaking her reverie to pieces. "Strong believer in quid pro quo, Mr. Malfoy." 

"Don't make me do it," she said quietly, her voice franticly trembling. "Vlad, don't make me, I'll do anything else, I--" 

"I've waited too long," he said , gripping her chin and forcing her too meet his gaze. "I've waited far too long for everything to be thrown to pieces by a terrified little _child_," he spat, his breath stinking of vodka. "You're a puppet, Narcissa, learn how to let me pull the strings!" 

Trembling in his grip, she let out a quiet sob. 

Instantly, Ulyanov's manner changed. "Oh poppet, poppet," he said, letting go and drawling her into an fatherly embrace. "Don't cry, you'll spoil your makeup." He gripped her by the shoulders, more gently this time, and met her wavering gaze. "This will be your ticket out of here." 

Narcissa ran a finger under her eye, trying to wipe away all traces of her tears. "Just get… get me the visa, Vlad," she said quietly, her voice still on unsteady legs. "Get me the visa and I'll do whatever you want." 

"You'll do that anyway, poppet," he said quietly. 

Narcissa closed her eyes, and shrugged hesitantly. She knew the truth in Ulyanov's statement. Suddenly, she stood up, squared her shoulders and met his mocking stare. "The visa," she repeated, her voice quavering. "I'm fucking desperate, don't take any more advantage of that than you absolutely have to." 

"_I'll do anything for you, dear_," Ulyanov sang, tipping his fur hat at her. She slunk away through the crowd towards the Minister's son. Smirking to himself, Ulyanov reached his hand into his pocket. Mercifully, the camera was still there. Though he had not told his little s_halava_, this tryst was also his ticket out of this hellhole. 

----

…oh no, be strong…

__

Cordoba, Spain

It was Ulyanov. 

Lucius Malfoy gave him a disgusted glance as he sunk into a leather armchair by his fireplace. "You interrupted me at a most inconvenient time," he said coldly as he eyed Ulyanov's head in the fire, his gray hair not even singed by the flickering flames. What a pity. "You know better than to intrude upon my private amusements, Mr. Ulyanov," he hissed. 

"But… the…" Ulyanov stuttered nervously, his disgustingly Russian accent grating at Lucius's frayed patience. "The… Aurors have arrived from the British Ministry, sir…" 

"You know better than to intrude upon my activities," Lucius repeated, his voice little more than a dangerous purr as he unfastened the clasp to his matador's jacket. 

"But…" Ulyanov was quickly loosing all of his marginal self-assurance, resorting to sniveling like an idiot. 

Lucius didn't even bother to hide the absolute disgust in his face. "You told me to contact you when they arrived…" Ulyanov whined sulkily. 

Lucius said nothing, playing suggestively with the edge of his bloody matador's sword. Ulyanov visibly swallowed. "I should have known better, Master, I…" 

"You are an idiot and a fool and will pay the consequences when we next meet," Malfoy drawled, tapping his knuckles on the flat of his blade. "Which, unfortunately for me, will be all too soon." 

"Master, I--" 

"Now that you have so rudely interrupted me," Lucius cut him off silkily. "Kindly state your business and remove yourself from my fireplace… in the greatest velocity." 

"_With _the greatest velocity," Ulyanov began. "You can't be in a velocity--"

"Obviously do not value your skin, overmuch" Lucius prodded, smarting from being corrected by an imbecile whose first language was Russian. 

"The Aurors… have arrived," Ulyanov swallowed as he realized his mistake. He shook his head, inanely and nervously, causing the flames to flicker. 

"You're disrupting my fireplace, Ulyanov," Lucius said warningly. 

Ulyanov's head instantly stopped twitching. "I've taken them to the Russian Roulette, which will keep them occupied and oblivious until your lordship makes time to deal with them accordingly," he said, sounding remarkably coherent for the first time in his disgusting existence. "The plan has already been set into action." 

Lucius stroked the rich velvet of his matador's jacket, considering. He would have liked to spend a few more days in Spain, but Ulyanov had created an opportunity too good to pass up. Not that Lucius would ever give his miserable creature the satisfaction of knowing that fact. "Very well," Lucius finally said, sounding quite the put-upon. "Tell Miriken to expect me tomorrow night, and Ulyanov?" 

"Yes, sir?" 

"Wash before I arrive," Lucius sneered. "I can smell you all the way from Moscow." 

Ulyanov's head disappeared without another word. 

Growling disdainfully to himself, Lucius thrust his sword into the fire and stirred the flames, trying to rid them of any vestigial traces of his disgusting subordinate. He would not allow himself to become contaminated by that filth. 

"You poor, poor man," Lucius didn't so much as move as a woman sidled up behind him and began to massage his shoulders. _"Pobrecito… Usted necesita un poco de mi amor ¿verdad?"_

Lucius groaned as he took a hold of the woman's hand. It was Consuelo, one of his many personal "assistants". Unlike the bumbling Ulyanov, Consuelo had the gift of knowing exactly what to "say" at exactly the right time. 

She began to cluck sympathetically as she sidled up beside him. "I know not how you tolerate such… what is the word? Here in España, we call them _putas_." 

"Prostitutes," Lucius filled in disdainfully as Consuelo chuckled, her enormous gold hoop earrings tinkling as she shook her head. 

"You are a great man, Señor Diablo, to tolerate so many _putas_."

Lucius laughed at that, because in her own sensual way, Consuelo was as much of a puta and hanger-on as Ulyanov. They all wanted a tiny bit of his glory. The only difference between the two putas was that his "assistant" was intelligent enough to know she meant nothing to him, whilst Ulyanov had to be constantly reminded of his own worthlessness. "I pay you well, Señorita," Lucius said as Consuelo's painted red lips curved into a self depreciating smile. 

----

…walk on, walk on / what you got they can't steal it, nah they can't even feel it / walk on, walk on / stay safe tonight…

__

Moscow, U.S.S.R

Two hours and twenty drinks later, Sirius was, if anything, even more clueless. 

Light! Heat! Twenty heartbeats all meshed into one rumbling, tumbling never-ending tidal wave of passion and pleasure…

it seemed that all of Moscow was dancing, strangers united in one common quest: to forget.

…to forget the pain…

…hardship…

…cold…

…hopeless disintegration of their lives…

…the Roulette brought this much needed reprieve, and as the frenzy of light, heat, drink, and love united a city divided…

…the dance intensified, the lights grew brighter, and the escape came closer…

…if they couldn't have a visa, at least they could paint the goddamn town red…

This was the heart and soul of the Russian Roulette. 

But, for once, Sirius was immune to the growing frenzy behind him. As Ulyanov wandered off to God knows where and James spun across the dance floor with one of the Roulette girls, he found himself hovering on the fringes of the crowd, doubt clinging to him like a burial shroud. 

Ever since the trio had stepped foot inside of the swanky club, an ominous sense of foreboding had been gnawing at his mind. Something he could not begin to understand. If Sirius believed in divination, he would have high-tailed it out of the club. But he didn't, and writing off his ill vibes to being too sozzled to think straight, he collapsed next to the bar with the half-baked idea of finding good ol' Moony. Never mind that Moony was 2,000 miles away, he had to be around the Roulette somewhere. Prongs was already too lost in the crowd to pursue. Glancing around the bar, Sirius shook his head. Not only was Moony gone, but the bartender as well, undoubtedly swept up in the roaring celebration taking place behind him. 

Sirius groped at the counter as he almost slid off of one of the barstools. His head was spinning wildly from all of the booze Sasha had pumped into him. He'd have a splitting hangover the next morning. What made Sirius feel all the worse was that normally he relished moments like this. He rode drunkenness' smoky sensuality like a pro, throwing himself completely into the high. But now all he wanted was to be able to think straight, and this unusual pensiveness was more than alarming to his live-and-let-die side. 

Behind him a great scream erupted as someone set off a small bomb, showering the club with sparks. Sirius watched as some hit the bar, sizzling as they landed in an abandoned cocktail. Glancing around to see if anyone would notice, Sirius furtively reached for the drink. He wasn't going to get sober anytime soon, and knocking himself out a bit more couldn't hurt...

"I wouldn't drink that if I was you," a woman's voice said from the shadows to his left. 

Sirius spun around, but the speaker was veiled in darkness. "You're not me," he said hoarsely as he raised the glass to his lips. 

"Well spotted," the stranger said, leaning a little closer to Sirius. Her face was still cloaked by shadow. 

"In that case ," Sirius shrugged non-committally at the stranger as he took a giant swig of the cocktail. 

The woman's voice was touched by amusement. "The drinks are spiked." 

Sirius sputtered, setting the cocktail down with a clatter. "With what?" 

The woman waited a second before replying, "Potions," She drew the word out across her tongue like a viper, savoring every syllable. "Potions of Zvana Miriken's own invention. Potions to addle the mind and numb the senses. Potions that increase the Roulette's earnings by at least 20% every night." She reached one perfectly manicured hand out of the shadows to trace the line of Sirius's jaw. 

"How do the... Potions do that?" he stammered, beginning to understand why he couldn't think straight. 

"Drunk men are not picky," the woman purred. 

Sirius knew there was a catch in this conversation somewhere. "Are you always so cynical?" he spluttered, taking another swig of the cocktail. Potions or not, he was too addled to care. 

She gave a small laugh. "Only at work." 

"You... you work here?" Sirius asked, beginning to put two and two together. He tried to get to his feet in order to get a better glance at the woman, but instead, he fell flat on his face, stumbling out of the stool and slamming his chin against the bar.

Her tone instantly grew gentler. "You better come with me. Don't speak," she whispered, holding one delicate finger to his lips. "No words at all. Not now. Not here." 

She took his hand, sweaty and dusty and rough in her own. She could feel his pulse beat against her wrist, where her own lifeblood flowed, in veins so delicate. 

So fragile. 

She led him through the mess of people, all their hopeless dreams boiling themselves away into one huge dance, a frenzied orgy of despair. 

"I am in the winter of my life," she whispered as he pushed her up against the wall, her hands groping at the peeling plaster as his fingers found handholds on her back, her thigh, the hollow of her throat…

He pressed his thumb against her neck, feeling the vibrations of her smoky voice. "I am in the winter of my life…" she whispered again. "It won't be long now." 

"What's your name?" he whispered slowly, his breath sliding across her sweaty face. 

"I told you not to say anything," she said in a sing-song voice, twining her fingers through his hair. "Besides, you won't remember in the morning." 

"I--"

"No words," she repeated, slipping her hands about his neck. "No words at all--" She turned away from his kiss to stare longingly out the open window. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of," she whispered quietly, oblivious to his touch, his breath, his heart beating beside her own. Slowly, she closed her eyes and swayed to the rhythm of the club. "This is all a little dream to you," she said as he worked his way down her neck. "Forgettable… ah--" She heaved a breath as his lips fluttered towards her tiny chest. "Oh… I am in the winter of my life," she repeated her mantra as his fingers tightened their grip on his hair. "And it won't be long now…" Her gaze shifted mechanically from the open window to his sweat-streaked face, barely visible in the wild strobe lights of the club. Moving for the first time, she ran one finger over the top of his forehead, tracing the bridge of his nose, finally lingering upon his lips. They stayed like that for the longest while. Neither one could moved, heartbeats entwined, as the club pulsed around them, through them, pumping into their veins. His breath caught in his throat when she finally broke the silence. 

"Let's get down to business." She took his dirty hand in her own and placed it on the inside of her thigh. "I'm all yours, Joe." 

"Sirius," he corrected quietly. 

"You're all Joe to me." 

And he lost himself in the taste of her lipstick and the mystery of her cheap perfume. 

----

Up Next Time in Of Mice and Mensheviks**- **_Let there be Lupin! _

Thanks to- CLS and Rowena especially for beta-ing,, without either of them, this fic would not be up here. 

Thanks to everyone that reviewed: Robyn, Katie Bell, Juliana, NS, viva paire, Misao, Marsisbright, Viktor'sGurl, leanne, aslan, stickpegasus, puzzler, choclate fireguard, arthur's merlin, kali ma, kelly, tia'rahu, ceitlin malefoy, moon, netshark, lauren vork, amanita lestrange, silvertounge, sorceress, meitora, kneazle, aragog, trinity day, and last but by no means least, trepidatio 

Also thanks to- William Shakespeare, whom Narcissa quotes. Kurt Vonnegut, whom I am under the influence of, and Baz Luhrmann (that name is synonymous with God in my world :O). I have seen Moulin Rouge, and though I started this fic before I did, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't influenced :O).)

Kudos to all that can name the Ulyanov's name and Roulette gals (and guy) references

Once again thanks, peace, please read and review and…

If someone asked you to play Russian Roulette, what would you say?

__

   [1]: www.notam.uio.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Russian.html



	3. The Requiem for a Trophy Wife

Title: Russian Roulette II: The Requium for a Trophy Wife

Title: Russian Roulette II: The Requiem for a Trophy Wife

Author Name: Soz

Author Email: canadadry@apexmail.com

Category: Romance/Angst

Keywords: Sirius/Narcissa, Lucius, Sirius, Narcissa

Spoilers: all the books

Rating: R

Summary: Sirius/Narcissa/Lucius triangle stretching from the illegal disco dance clubs of Communist-controlled Moscow to the Soviet prison camps of Western Siberia. Find what made and broke Sirius Black before he set foot in Azkaban.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. I do not own or make claims upon the following songs whose lyrics I use: _Mrs. Potter's Lullaby_ (Counting Crows), _American Pie_ (Don McLean), _Lady Marmalade_ (Patti LaBelle), _Mack the Knife_ (the best recording is by Louis Armstrong, but I think _Three Penny Opera_ has the rights), or _You Make Me Sick_ (Pink). I own the character of Josef Dzhugashvilli, but not his name, which I make no claims upon (Dzhugashvilli is the birth name of Josef Stalin). The Russian Roulette itself is based upon a historical club (which was more a gambling den than an actual dance hall) operated in 1970s Soviet Moscow by a woman named Elizabeth Miriken. Like the fictional Zvana, Miriken's husband was in a Gulag. So I apologize here for any slander to the Mirikens, and any harm I do to their illegal club. 

A/N: More dirty Russian words for your enjoyment!

****

der'mo- shit

****

gov'nk(y)- bastard(s)

****

shavala- slut/whore

****

zdravstvuite- hello

****

gulag- the Siberian forced-labor camps where Russia sent a lot of her political prisoners (they were especially popular under Stalin)

****

fag- British slang for a cigarette

****

Dmitri- is the Russian equivalent of James

Dedicated to: Connie, for her hands-down invaluable beta and interest in this fic which, to be completely frank, kept me going when I had almost given up on this problem child. Thanks :O). 

__

more A/N at the bottom (thanks and apologies)

...She's not the kinda girl you give flowers to. She understands the velvet touch of an unwanted hand, slick with sin and tender as the night, racing up her back like bite of a silken whip...

Russian Roulette II-- The Requiem for a Trophy Wife

__

If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts. You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast.

-Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, Counting Crows

December 31, 1995

Moscow, Russia

Silence. Hard. Ringing. And bitterly empty silence. No, that wasn't completely true. There was an insufferable ringing in his ears, which intensified and spiraled out of control every time he turned his eyes away from his menu. 

Turned his eyes to her. It happened when he looked at her perfect porcelain features, features he wanted to take within his fingers and shatter, as if she had been but a china doll, inanimate and lifeless. He wanted to shatter her like she has shattered all of his youthful dreams, shattered the safety net that had held him inside of his childish fantasies. The net which had broken, leaving him to blindly fall, forever and away into the downward spiral that led to Azkaban. 

He forced his eyes back to the menu. Painstakingly printed in a flowing red script, the menu's paper alone was worth more than the clothes on Sirius's back, which did nothing for his self-esteem. But, despite all of the rubles pumped into its creation, he could only stare blindly at the text, his eyes skimming over the words like rocks skip across a pond, lightly touching, but not having any real contact at all. 

The truth was he couldn't take his eyes off of her face. Porcelain. Perfect. 

Poisonous. 

Her eyes, which had been gazing at the menu, moved upwards to meet his own. Not a single emotion passed over her face; it remained as apathetic and empty as the countenance of a porcelain doll. He knew that his own face must be the polar opposite, seething will ill-disguised fury, and even more blatant hate. 

But her eyes... oh God those eyes. It killed him all over again to see the emptiness in her gaze, the icy hollow where there had once been spark, life... love. 

Sixteen years with Lucius Malfoy had changed her eyes. 

Sixteen years with Lucius Malfoy had changed everything. 

Harry had told him that the Malfoys have a son. He didn't even want to think about that, think about his hands on hers, his lips running across her skin, his heart beating alongside hers...

Her lips forming the words she had whispered in his own ear so many years before:

__

I love you. 

He could hear her saying it. 

__

I love you, Luicus. 

__

I love you. 

__

I love--

It was so ironic, how everything had resolved. Because in the beginning, he had wanted only Narcissa, she had wanted only Lucius and Lucius...

Lucius had wanted him. 

Harry didn't know about her, even after all these years. No living soul did, except for the man she called husband, the werewolf who was his only friend in the world, and the man... the man who had betrayed them all. 

Peter. 

Not that there was anything to know, not anymore. Narcissa and him, they were over. Done. A casualty of war. They were all casualties of war, victims of the never-ending struggle against Voldemort. After all of those years of pain, suffering, being locked in a cage 7 by 5 paces with 962 stones in the wall and a single window that let in a patch of light that was as big as his hand at high noon and blood red when the sun dipped itself behind the western horizon, all he could think was: Was it worth it? The war had robbed him of his freedom, but beyond that it had stolen happiness, homes, and family from an entire generation. 

The war had taken their loves, and maybe even their capacity to feel that emotion once more. 

His capacity to feel that emotion once more. 

Love had never meant much of anything to her. 

__

I love you, Lucius. 

"Mr. Black!" 

Sirius jumped straight out of his reverie to be confronted head on with a rather disgruntled Cornelius Fudge. "Sorry, sorry..." he muttered, bending down to pick up his menu, which had fallen to the floor in his alarm. 

"Your cocktail, sir?" a weed of a waiter chirped from behind him. His voice was so oily and hair so slick that Sirius wouldn't be surprised if that man had bathed himself in an entire can of axle grease. 

"Cocktail?" Sirius echoed dumbly, still lost in his own little world. "Oh! A cocktail..." It had been so long since he had been in any kind of social setting other than a private shindig at Remus's, and he had all but forgotten the rules of etiquette, though many would testify that it was dubious if Sirius even knew them in the first place. 

Fudge looked rather nonplussed, and he bent over to mutter apologetically to the waiter. Sirius picked up the words _Azkaban_ and _regrettably_ _unhinged_. He rolled his eyes. 

"Get me a screwdriver, sans orange juice," Narcissa volunteered from across the table. Even her voice had changed. She had lost most of her accent, and her tone seemed colder... almost harder. As for her order, Sirius didn't even try to suppress the bittersweet grin. Screwdriver sans orange juice had been the "drink" of choice for a certain Vladimir Ulyanov, though Vladimir Ulyanov had never existed except in the secret world of the Russian Roulette. Like everything else Sirius had encountered in his brief stint behind the Iron Curtain, Vladimir Ulyanov had been a red herring, a mere shadow of reality.

"And you, sir?" the waiter said, turning to Sirius once more. He didn't turn his gaze from its lock on Narcissa, who was pretending she didn't notice his stare by delving into her menu. "Sir?" the waiter repeated, when Sirius didn't make a reply. 

"Get me a Mata Hari," Sirius said quietly. Narcissa dropped her menu. 

"A what, sir?"

"A Mata Hari," Sirius repeated. "It doesn't really matter what you put in it, as long as you're heavy on the bullshit." 

"Sir?" the waiter sounded as if he was about to piss in his pants. 

"Mr. Black!" Fudge exploded from beside him. "I daresay don't know what you mean by this... this... disgraceful behavior!" 

Sirius cut him off, eyes blazing. "You may not, but Mrs. Malfoy does. Don't you, Narcissa?" He spat angrily. 

All over the Roulette, people were beginning to stare. Narcissa pushed her chair out from the table so hard it almost fell over. Coldly, she got to her feet. Sirius could see the heat rising in her face. "If you'd excuse me--" she began. 

Throwing all residual caution to the dogs, Sirius leapt to his feet. "That's it." He spat coldly as Fudge and half the restaurant stared on in rapt amazement. "Walk away. Pretend nothing ever happened. You're damn good at that you know? Forgetting!" He knew he was making a spectacle of himself but at this point, he had ceased to even care. 

Narcissa stood stock still for a second, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. "I don't have to stand for this," she said viciously, spinning on her heel and striding away from the table. The waiter tried to restrain her, but she pushed him out of the way. Sirius watched her go, a bitter smile on his face. And then, without thinking, he began to follow…

__

Now for ten years we've been on our own/And moss grows fat on a rollin' stone/But that's not how it used to be…

----

January 1, 1980

Moscow, U.S.S.R

Moonlight spilled into the room like liquid silver. It lay in tiny puddles on the floor, waiting to be splattered by dancing feet across the expectant room: blank, like a painter's empty canvas.

It was a soul ripped raw or a page unwritten, desperately longing for a hand. 

He rolled over, open eyes reflecting the moonlit mystery. His hand was tangled lazily amidst her silken hair, heart beating in time with the rise and fall of her sleeping form. 

She lingered in him still. The discordant tones of her smoky voice, ravaged by hash and tears still echoed in the confines of his ears whilst the metallic taste of her cheap lipstick hung about his lips, tasting like the calm before a storm. 

A feeling struck him, intuition that nothing had ever grown in her heart, and its barrenness, its emptiness was a field without its furrow, a tempest without its teapot, a heart without its love.

It was all so wrong--

this city, this night--

this girl.

He shouldn't be here, lying on a dirty mattress, cradling a filthy girl within his arms. He felt as if he was invading someone else's life, stealing one of their precious and most private moments. 

It was all a dream to him, a dream from which he desperately hoped he would wake... until he remembered the taste of her lipstick, and the mystery of her cheap perfume. 

Daylight. Soon it would be dawn. When the light came, this night would be but a fleeting memory, joining the incalculably long list of woulda coulda shouldas-- the has-beens of his life. 

It would be a sugar-spun fantasy dissolving into stark reality. 

Into the hard bed. 

The filthy room. 

And the emptiness in her dead eyes. 

Oh, God... what had he done? 

----

He was still awake when she opened her eyes. For a moment, she didn't move, locked in his arms like a beloved trophy, her curls tangled in a ring round his rosy smile holding it tight, as if she were a little girl grasping her pocket full of posies. 

Ashes, ashes we all fall down. 

She swallowed hard, her tiny nub of an Adam's apple bobbing up and down the soft flesh of her throat. She didn't remember this one. His arm tightened protectively around her narrow shoulders, cradling her even closer... closer... trapped!

Abruptly, she sat bolt upright, the ragged sheet covering her sleeping form falling from her naked shoulders to lay pooled around her thighs like a discarded burial shroud. "Go," she whispered. 

His reply was a long time in coming. "Why?" Ever so gently, he reached forward, his errant fingers wandering over the plane of her back, the slope of her spine, the orbit of her hips-- she drew a sharp breath.

"Go away," she repeated, heart beating like a caged bird's wings as she leapt from the bed and away from his probing fingers, his expectant lips, his hungry gaze. "You've had what you wanted. Just... just go." 

She remained wrapped in her burial shroud of a sheet as he wordlessly got to his feet, eyes focused on the ground as he reached for his jeans, crumpled and forgotten on the floor like a sex-crime victim lies discarded by the roadside, her cries inaudible to closed ears. 

Inside, she was screaming. 

Outside, she quietly watched as he pulled on his ragged green T-shirt, the only swath of color in the entire room. He never once looked up, never once met her gaze, which was wavering between him and the open window. 

Her favorite song had been Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). 

"Go out the window," she said quietly, more to herself than for his benefit. "There's a fire escape you can climb down. You can't go out the front door, the S.D.E. has this house under surveillance." 

"Why?" he said, pulling a denim jacket over his shoulders that would do nothing against the Moscow winter. 

Smiling was almost painful. But she needed to act for him, she couldn't let him see the truth. "The Roulette is in here. You think it's legal?" 

His grin outshone her feeble attempt. "Of course not." When she didn't reply, he made for the open window, hands pulling open the sash, and then resting upon the icy sill, the tips of his fingers melting ten holes in the light dusting of frost. Abruptly, he turned around, his breath freezing into tiny puffs of ice. "What's your name?" 

She drew the sheet closer, shaking her head almost wistfully. "It doesn't matter." 

He stepped away from the window, oblivious to the torrent of snow pouring in through the open sash. "Don't ever say that." There was a fierce note in his voice, daring her to disagree with him and then see how far she got. 

She wished she could be that sure of herself, of what she believed, of who she even was. "Why not?" she whispered, drawing the sheet closer to her, as if she were a small child and it was her security blanket, protecting her from the bogeymen and monsters that inhabited the fantasies of children and the all-too-real world of adulthood. 

He took a step closer. She smiled, his T-shirt was on backwards. 

"It does matter," he said, reaching forwards and gripping her hand so tight she felt as if he was going to wrench her fingers off. His own hand was like ice to the touch, freezing her fragile skin. "To me." 

"I've never mattered to anyone," she said, her voice barely even a whisper as he reached forward to brush a flyaway lock of silvery blonde hair behind her ear. 

"Let me do this right, ok?" he challenged, bending closer to her. "Let me appease my conscience." 

"Please go," her breath was like a tiny puff of frost against his warm throat. "Please..." 

"You're like a little flower," he mused aloud, his fingers twining inside her own. "So fragile... how do you live here?"

Gently she eased her hand out of his bigger grip. The sheet was steadily slipping down the curve of her shoulders, exposing the small of her back to the New Year's chill. "My name is Narcissa," she said. 

The sides of his mouth curved into a lopsided smile. "You're named after a flower." 

"You had better go," she breathed softly after a single moment. He turned away wordlessly, steps ringing hard as he strode towards the open window and swung one leg over the frozen sill--

"Wait!" she called, holding out a single porcelain hand. He paused, eyes quizzical under his shaggy crop of hair. "Who are you?" 

"Sirius. Sirius Black," he replied, straddling the window as a cowboy would his trusty steed. "I'm named after a dog." 

And with that, he vanished over the edge of the sill. She listened to the sound of his feet along the fire escape, until they faded away into memory: once had, too soon forgotten. 

----

Sirius paused on the fire escape, heart in his throat as he watched a figure enter the front door of the home he was exiting so furtively. He would know that shock of silvery-blonde hair anywhere. 

__

What the hell was Lucius Malfoy doing here? 

----

"Wake up, wake up! Time to smell the roses, eh Dmitri?" 

James opened one eye blearily. "Lily?" 

"Roses, roses," he felt a pair of strong hands prop him up into what he thought was a sitting position, but he couldn't quite be sure. He felt as if his brain had been transfigured into scrambled eggs. "Lilies don't smell, eh? At least, I never knew one that did, but there's a first for everything-" the voice blabbered on, and though he was speaking in little more than a whisper, it seemed to James as if the man was screaming at the top of his lungs. He pressed his hands to his ears, groaning in absolute misery. James's head dropped onto his chest, as he unconsciously tuned out the stranger's god-awful voice. It became a gentle buzzing in his ears, lulling him... lulling him to sleep...

"Upsidaisy! Don't fall over now," the voice chuckled, holding James steady. 

Lethargically, he peeled one eyelid open. Then shut it. Hard. How the hell did everything get so bright all of a sudden? Slowly, blinking back tears, James managed to pull open his eyes. Two facts became readily apparent:

1. He was shamefully hungover and in for the motherfucking headache of the century. 

2. As an added bonus, he was sitting in the middle of the dirtiest, most decrepit room he had ever been in his entire life. 

It was a long low rectangle of concrete about a fourth the size of a Quiddich pitch. The walls had been whitewashed somewhere far back in antiquity and they were now peeling profusely, the dust and paint and plaster all morphing together into one omnipresent coat of grime that clung to the floor and the ceiling of the room like a second skin, and made James want to run screaming to his shower. James shivered. Dirt and grime was all well and good to Sirius, who had grown up in Liverpool and was used to it, but nothing made him feel more uncomfortable. 

"Yeah, it's a sight, ain't it, gov?" a voice remarked from James's left, noting the young Auror's disgusted glance. 

James turned his head to face the speaker. His first instinct was to retch. It took all of his inbred politeness not to. The man was the dictionary definition of disgusting. James has never seen anyone so repulsive in all of his nineteen years of life. The stranger was covered head to foot in a dusty black grit that gathered in the tiny crevices under his eyes, giving him the look of a sleep-deprived raccoon. He looked about seventy, though the truth was the man could be anywhere between an infirm sixty and a sprightly ninety. Both of the stranger's front incisors were missing and the rest of his teeth were rotted almost completely away, leaving a mouth full of grayish gums and tiny black nubs of teeth. The man wore a factory-issue jumpsuit, pulled tight over his (more-than) ample middle. He seemed to be falling apart before James's eyes, seconds from death's door. In short, the man epitomized every single reason that James had in mind when he told Sirius a years before that he wanted to die young. "I can't imagine..." he had muttered, stomach turning itself in knots. "Being so helpless... so smelly..." 

Sirius had a good laugh and clapped his squeamish friend on the back. "You'll be a regular old fart James, just you wait." 

Back in the present James was nothing short of drop-jaw horrified. "My... my name is James," his etiquette managed to choke out on autopilot. He was at an utter loss for the proper thing to do. All of his father's meticulous teaching, which had covered everything from schmoozing up foreign royalty to escaping rabid camps of Death Eaters in the darkest Amazon, had not even touched on waking up in a concrete bomb shelter with a dirty old man for company.

"Dmitri," the old man agreed. He seemed to be able to talk reasonably well without his teeth. "Yes, you told me last night." 

"Last night?" the whole previous day was coming back to James in jigsaw pieces, most of which did not fit together. He remembered it all through a fuzzy sort of haze: arriving at the floo-port, Ulyanov's questioning... and then... then taking Sirius and himself to the Russian Roulette, but after that everything faded away, lost behind an impenetrable veil of vagueness and more than a just a little vodka. For that matter, where was Sirius? And who was this old man who seemed to know him? 

After a quick moment of deliberation, James decided to be frank. He didn't really have anything to loose. It wasn't as if he had had a one night stand with the old fart. At least he seriously hoped he hadn't... "I'm sorry, I can't seem to remember who-" 

"I am," the old man finished. "Can't say if I blame you," he laughed, his breath stinking of cheap vodka. "If I had been smacked with what you were last night, I'd hardly remember my own name." 

"What was I smacked with?" James shook his head, pulling off his glasses to wipe them clean on the sleeve of his Muggle sweater. "I don't follow you." 

The man's eyes widened, like someone who has realized when they've said far too much. "Nothing at all," his eyes darted about wildly. "Vodka!" he finished, laughing nervously. "Wicked powerful, that Roulette vodka... brewed right here on the premises, it is."

James's eyebrows knitted together as he slipped his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. It never occurred to him to doubt what the old man was saying. "Wait... what do you mean, here on the premises?" 

The man laughed, his stinking breath enveloping James. Prongs dissolved into a fit of coughing. "This is the Russian Roulette, Dmitri," the man said sympathetically, patting James on the back. 

"The Russian Roulette?" James echoed dumbly, gazing around slack jawed. This drab concrete bomb shelter seemed the furthest thing from the lively pulsing club of the night before. Even the air in the room seemed heavy, stale, and dead. He didn't know whether to believe the old man or not. 

"Yeah, I know it doesn't look like much of a club," the old man shrugged. "but that's the idea, we can't get ourselves arrested, eh?" 

"Why would be get arrested?" James said, shivering as his eyes fell upon a hypodermic needle lying discarded a few paces away from where he sat. 

The old man tilted his head to the side, a slightly amused expression on his face. "The Boss wasn't exaggerating, you really don't have a clue what is going on." 

"I wouldn't say that--" James prickled, feeling mildly offended despite that veracity of the other man's statement. 

The old man just shook his head at James's naivete. "The Russian Roulette is an underground club. We're breaking the law every night we open our doors. Luckily, the authorities have no idea we exist." 

"Why would a club be illegal?" 

The man wiped his nose of the sleeve of his jumpsuit. "The official reason is that nightclubs are disruptive to the stability of the state," the man spat on the floor, eloquently expressing his opinion on this fascist euphemism. "The truth is that they're just scared of us getting ideas that life is more than just factories and party rallies and mindless obedience. They're scared of us finding out how to live," he smiled his haggard toothless grin. "They underestimate us, I think." 

"Good Communists don't drink," he continued. "They don't whore. Good Communists don't have money to fritter away in nightclubs. Come to think of it," he chuckled, "Good Communists don't have money at all. There's no such thing as a good Communist, Dmitri." 

James said nothing, unsure of how to respond to such a statement. Luckily, the old geezer wasn't looking for a reply. "The government," the old man ranted. "They say they'll provide for us, eh? They say every man is equal, king to cripple on the same level. Ha. Ha. Ha." He spat sarcastically, accenting each Ha with a jab towards James's chest. "The government, they don't give us shit, Dmitri. Nil. Nada. We survive on the black market. Thank God for the con men. And--" the man cut himself off. "Officially there is no God. You can get sent straight to the Gulags for so much as praying. The government has created an entire nation of spiritual perverts. But the Boss plans to change all that." 

"Wait," James held up a hand, cutting the old man off. "Who is this Boss?" 

"The Boss told me you were clueless," the old man said smoothly. "And I plan to keep it that way, eh?" 

"I'm going to find out eventually," James challenged. 

"A lot of things will happen eventually," the man shrugged. "The world will end, and you and I will return to dust. But I like you," he added sympathetically. "Nothing funny..." he said quickly to ease the look of alarm on James's face. "You're just a nice boy that doesn't belong here, hm?" 

"Thank you... I think," James said, rather tentatively as the stranger lowered his voice to a whisper. 

"The Boss is our president, our pubah, and as much of a God to the spiritually perverted as it is possible to be," the man whispered, glancing over his shoulder, as if expecting the Boss himself to be listening into their conversation. "The Boss got me the job here, conceived of the Roulette--" 

"So your Boss owns the Russian Roulette?" James said swiftly, trying to piece together the old man's scattered clues. 

"No," the old man said replied. "Officially, there is no Russian Roulette, therefore it cannot be owned. This is just an old run down basement in the house of one Zvana Miriken. Her husband was a doctor before he was taken to one of the Gulags so she gets her own residence, unlike the rest of Moscow. Most of the Roulette girls room upstairs. Zvana doesn't need the whole house just for herself and its better accommodations than most of Moscow, where ten to a room is the top of the heap. A bomb shelter like this," the stranger glanced around the empty room as he stuck his tongue through the hole in his teeth, considering. "It could house eighty, ninety under Communist housing standards. If you think about it, Zvana's home is relatively private compared to the rest of Moscow. Don't think that I'm implying anything Dmitri, but if Mrs. Miriken wished... this is a nice cozy little pad to run a covert operation from." 

"Or an underground club," James filled in the blank left by the toothless stranger. 

"I like the way you think!" the old man grinned, delighted at the prospect of corrupting his young guest's mind. 

"So this Zvana Miriken," James began. "Is she the Boss?" 

"No," the old man said flatly. "Here," he continued, struggling to his feet with the help of a rough-hewn cane. "Let me help you up, eh Dmitri?" 

For the umpteenth time that morning, James's jaw dropped open. The geezer's right leg was completely missing from the knee down, and his jumpsuit was neatly tied off below the stump. James tried to direct his gaze elsewhere but it was futile. His eyes kept drifting back to the leg, caught in the net of morbid fascination. 

The old man noticed the direction of James's gaze. "Ah... I got me that in a Gulag, Dmitri-- frostbite took it." He shrugged. "It still pains me sometimes, especially when it's about to snow. It's been hurting like hell this winter." 

"I'm sorry," James said, taking the old man's filthy hand and getting to his feet, both of which he firmly planted on the ground for reassurance. 

"Don't be," the man scoffed, leaning forward on his cane. "Lots of folk came out of the Gulags much worse." 

"Gulags?" 

"Siberian prison camps," the man replied, his dirty face loosing its continual grin. "That's where the government send all of the philosophically perverted. You know... people who think for themselves?" He laughed bitterly at his own joke. "Most of the people in the Gulags are political prisoners, suspected spies, foreign diplomats, the kind of people that could give the common proletariat like me dangerous ideas. My story isn't quite that glamorous, though," the man sighed, running his tongue across the hole in his teeth. "My family has been Muscovites as far back as my tired old mind can remember. We were here far before the days of the Golden Horde, before Ivan the III, before the Grand Dukes of Moscow themselves I'd wager. It was about ten years ago, and the government was starting another one of their brilliant 5 year plans. This current scheme had something to do with redistributing the population, making the Motherland more agrarian, blah blah blah, your usual propagandist _der'mo_," the old man spat bitterly. "My son and his wife were shipped by the government to labor on a farm in Bulgaria, against their will. You have to understand, my son is a good man, but he is from the University, not the factories like me. He is used to laboring with his mind, not his hands. So, I go to the Kremlin to complain, and I get a life sentence in the Gulags for my trouble." 

James's jaw dropped. "Then did they let you out early?" 

"No," the man said matter-of-factly. "I escaped, being the hardened criminal that I am. There was an explosion in the mine I was working in and we managed to slip away in all of the mayhem." 

"But Siberia..." James stammered. "That's what? 800 miles from here?" 

"2000," the old man corrected tersely. "All across the tundra in midwinter," he said this without a trace of pride. Instead, his face seemed pained, as if the memory itself hurt him. "That's how I lost this leg," he nodded towards his stump. "The Doctor had to amputate with nothing but his knife and a bottle of vodka." 

"How could the government be so heartless?" James shook his head slowly, marveling at his quick lesson in Soviet humanitarianism. 

The old man tilted his head, staring at James as if he was really seeing him for the first time. "You really didn't do your background research, did you?" 

"I--" James began. 

"Look," the old man leaned forward onto his cane. "Go home, you and your friend. You aren't going to find any Communist-death-eater conspiracies. It's not that neat and clean in Moscow." James balked at the idea of anyone calling a Death Eater conspiracy "neat and clean". "Things aren't pretty here and sooner or later you're going to get sucked into one of the private wars. This isn't your battle, Dmitri." The man shook his head, ruing James's youthful ignorance. "You have a wife, correct? Child on the way? You have a future. Don't waste it here. I don't want to find you in a Gulag." 

James's jaw dropped straight open in amazement. "How did you know about Lily?" 

The man's face was dead serious. "The Boss told me. Everything I've told you, he told me to tell you." He paused, holding his breath for the briefest of moments. "But this is off the record, Dmitri, because I like you and don't want to see you get hurt. And if you stay here, eventually you will. Leave. Leave while you still can." 

"I have a mission," James drew himself up to his full height. 

The man shrugged, his manic desperation deflated. "It's your choice."

"Thank you, though," James said, extending his hand. "I'll keep your warning in mind." 

The man shrugged off Prongs's words, staring at James's outstretched hand. "I'd take it," he said, eyes flickering towards his cane. "But I'd loose my balance." 

"It's alright," James said, withdrawing his hand and tucking it into the pocket of his Muggle pants. "Thought that counts, eh?" 

"I'm Sasha Krum, by the way," the old man said. "I was your bartender last night." 

"I'm James--" 

"I know," Sasha cut him off. "The Boss told me." There was a heavy pause, strung with unspoken tension. "You need to leave. The S.D.E. is onto Zvana and out little club, so they have the house under 24-hour surveillance. The Boss doesn't know how long we'll be able to keep paying them off and we shouldn't press out luck any more than we have to. Take my coat," he nodded towards the corner, where a ratty torn piece of wool lay crumpled up in a ball. "You'll blend in more. If the authorities find out you're foreign its as good as a death sentence." 

James's mind reeled from Sasha's tirade and for the briefest of seconds, a look of utter vulnerability passed over his features. "I just want to know the truth." 

"The truth?" Sasha paused and his haggard face suddenly looked very far away. "What truth?" 

"Please," James said quietly... desperately. 

A look of sympathy crossed over Sasha's features. "If you want to know the truth, find the Sad Clown. But you didn't hear it from me." 

__

When the Jester sang for the King and Queen/In a coat he borrowed from James Dean/And a voice that came from you and me

----

__

An hour earlier...

"Mrs. Miriken, I hope I am not interrupting?" 

Zvana suppressed a yawn as she opened the front door up in full, drawing her dressing gown closer towards her. With a the undeniable sensation that she was making a very big mistake, Zvana lifted up her goosebumped arm and let her visitor pass under it, into the relative warmth of her hallway. "Well..." Zvana began, searching for a reply to mask her shock. She was glad that Sasha had just driven out the last of the drunken stragglers from the Roulette. There were certain risks when one was running an illegal disco dance club in one's basement, and one of them was having KGB agents appear at one's door in the middle of the night. She bit her lip, hoping to whatever God that was out there that she could talk her way out this one. Zvana settled for a neutral: "It's been a while Mr. Dzhugashvilli." 

"That it has, Mrs. Miriken," Josef Dzhugashvilli said, clearing his throat as he wiped the snow from his Government-issue boots onto Zvana's clean carpet. "Is there a chair?" 

"Of course, I forget myself," Zvana kept a polite smile pasted on her face as she led the way down the hallway to her office. She deftly opened the door, flicking on a lamp in the process. "Please," she gestured to two ragged armchairs. "Take a seat." Zvana had made a nice little kitty off the Roulette, but it would be far too conspicuous to buy anything than the Government-issue furniture. That was the problem with so many of Moscow's black market operations. The racketeers began to exhibit signs of instant wealth by indulging in luxurious clothes and fine furniture. This excess instantly marked them as black market entrepreneurs, little better than sitting ducks to the waiting government cronies. Zvana wasn't as stupid as most of the other underground capitalists; but then again, she had learned how to break the law from a master...

Dzhugashvilli lowered himself into a chair and Zvana slid in behind her desk, masking her trembling hands behind piles of paper. She couldn't afford to get caught. If the Roulette were discovered, she was on a one way train straight to the Gulags. She had waited too long for all of her meticulous plans to be destroyed by a meddling KGB agent. However, as her mind reeled in panic, she managed a bland smile. "What can I do for you, Mr. Dzhugashvilli?" The nerve of the man, coming in here, inside her home after what he had done to her husband...

Dzhugashvilli leaned on his armchair, surveying Zvana so she almost felt as if she were under a microscope. "You already know I am a KGB operative, Mrs. Miriken, so I need not go into the preliminary speech of introduction." 

"Let me cut to the chase, Dzhugashvilli, if you won't." Zvana hissed, red lips curling into a feral sneer as she leaned over her desk towards the KGB agent. The sight of the man made her sick, as she could still remember the last time he had set foot within her walls. It had been a winter night, bitterly cold, just like this one. It had been almost ten years ago, long before the Roulette, before the drinks and the whores. Those had been the days before she had become a solider in the front lines of the underground rebellion against the tyranny housed in the Kremlin, filling in the place vacated by her husband that bitter cold winter night ten years ago…

BANG! 

She rolled over in bed, her hand trailing listlessly off the side, fingers gently brushing the cold wooden floor. 

BANG! 

"Zvana…" Groaning, she buried herself deeper underneath the heavy blankets, encasing herself inside a cocoon of warmth. "Zvana!" 

Both of her eyes flew open as another resounding crash echoed from the floor below. She was lying in her bed, hand trailing on the floor as her husband crouched over her, holding a finger to his lips. "Alexi," she began quietly as another bang shook the entire house. An old tome that had been lying on her dresser fell off, scattering the bedroom floor with moldy pages. "Alexi… what is that noise?" 

He shook his head, finger still on his lips. "Quiet," his tone left no room for argument. 

Another crash rocked the house, and Zvana heard the unmistakable sound of splintering on the floor below. Loud voices began to travel up the stairs and the sound… the sound of hobnailed boots. "Alexi?" her entire frame was shaking now, voice quavering in terror. 

"They're coming for me." His face held no expression. 

"Go out the window," she said urgently, pushing him away. "There's still time, there's--"

"No use," he finished her sentence for her. "They'd take you instead," suddenly, the door to their bedroom was flung open, bright light flooding the darkness. Zvana gave a little cry and covered her eyes, temporarily blinded. But even the harsh light couldn't block out the hard voice echoing in her ears.

"Alexander Miriken, I place you under arrest by order of the Secretary General." Silhouetted in the doorway like a shadow play on the wall, had been Dzhugashvilli and fifteen of his cronies. But these KGB agents were not mere silhouettes. They were all to real: flesh and blood. Dzhugashvilli had spared no words on the cornered couple. "You are guilty of political insurrection, and crimes against the sanctity of the State--"

"You are the rock on which I will build my church," Alexi hissed to her urgently, ignoring the KGB agents advancing on the bed. "And I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven." Before she could open her mouth to reply, or even scream, he had fitted his lips upon her own, kissing her with such painful urgency that she almost choked as he thrust something deep… deep within her mouth…

And then he was gone as the agents bent down a ripped him off of her, pulling him towards the open door where Dzhugashvilli waited, hat pulled down low over his beady eyes. Alexi made no protest as they fitted a pair of handcuffs around his wrists. His eyes were focused upon her, blazing with an unquenchable flame. "The keys, Zvana," he yelled. "I've given you the keys to the kingdom--" 

She screamed as Dzhugashvilli brought the butt of his gun down upon her husband's captive form. Alexi crumpled like a rag doll. "Madman," the agent hissed, spitting on the floor. The agent turned his cold gaze upon Zvana, trembling like a leaf under her blankets. "We were never here, you miserable little bitch." Zvana could only nod dumbly, hand pressed over her mouth to keep herself from screaming. "There is no such person as Alexander Miriken," Dzhugashvilli hissed quietly. "There never was… and never will there be again." He strode out of the room, boots echoing in the hallway, down the stairs, and out into the bitter cold night. His men followed, her husband's limp form slung over their shoulders. 

Fingers trembling, Zvana raised her hand to her lips, still smarting from the urgency of Alexi's last kiss. She reached inside her mouth, and found nestled beside her tongue, what had caused her so much pain. 

__

I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. 

It was a key, pushed inside her mouth by Alexi in his last few moments as a free man. Hand shaking in raw fear, Zvana held the key to her lips, somehow hoping that it held some lingering taste of her husband. But flesh is flesh, and metal is metal, and a key is a new beginning. 

She found out later than they had taken Alexi to the Gulags on the charge of political insurrection, and that tiny bit of information was gleaned only after extensive bribes. It seemed that no one wanted to talk about her Alexi, afraid that his fate would befall them too. The Gulags were a death sentence within themselves. She had never expected to see her husband again.

Much, much later, the key proved to be her pass to the concrete bomb-shelter underneath her home, a secret chamber she had never known existed. Inside, Alexi had left a wealth of information about Moscow's black market, when to blackmail and who to bribe and where to get the goods. He had also included detailed instructions on how to put together his last great brainchild, an underground scam the likes of which had never been attempted. Alexander Miriken wanted to create an illegal nightclub, a dance hall which was to become the Russian Roulette. And Zvana was not about to let Dzhugashvilli find the Roulette, and in a sense, kill her husband all over again. The Roulette had been Alexi's dying wish. 

__

You are the rock on which I will build my church, and I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Dr. Alexander Miriken never did anything without a purpose. 

And that had been the last time she had seen Dzhugashvilli. That terrible winter night, Zvana had been to shocked to cry out, to protest, to bring her Alexi back. She had been helpless, trapped. And she'd be damned if she let that happen again. 

"Let me cut to the chase Dzhugashvilli," Zvana hissed, red lips curving into a feral sneer as she leaned over her desk towards the K.G.B. agent. "What the _der'mo_ are you doing in my home?" 

Dzhugashvilli's reply came in the blink of an eyelash. "Still smarting over your husband, Miriken? It's been ten years." 

Zvana had to fight to keep her voice below a yell. "You came and took him to the Gulags in the middle of the night, without giving us so much as a warning." 

"Your husband was guilty of political insurrection, Mrs. Miriken. He did not deserve a warning." Dzhugashvilli said coldly. 

"My husband died in the Gulags," Zvana said icily. "He's dead because of you, Mr. Dzhugashvilli. Dead." 

"Alexander Miriken was a threat to the stability of the state," Dzhugashvilli replied, his icy face not showing the slightest trace of sympathy. "He was liquidated, as you will be if you continue this charade." 

"Charade?" Zvana's heart gave a lurch, but her face betrayed none of her inner fear. Dzhugashvilli couldn't possibly know about the Russian Roulette... 

"I'll be frank with you, Mrs. Miriken, because I know that you're too intelligent to fall for any false premises." Dzhugashvilli leaned back in his chair, his face loosing none of its intensity. "Have you heard of the Sad Clown?" 

"Of course," Zvana said, a little too hastily. 

"Then you are undoubtedly familiar with his anti-Communist activities?" Zvana nodded curtly. "In addition to his now weekly bombings, we at the KGB has received several letters from this Sad Clown, all demanding political freedoms, your run of the mill rabble-rousing nonsense. Most of my colleagues have dismissed these letters as simply the ranting of a displeased madman, but I," he paused dramatically. "I see a connection, Mrs. Miriken."

"Really?" Zvana said, her throat suddenly going very, very dry. 

"The letters from the Sad Clown remind me intensely of the writings of your late husband, Mrs. Miriken," Dzhugashvilli said, watching Zvana's face intently for any kind of reaction. "I do not believe in coincidences." 

When she next spoke, her voice was strained as tight as a bowstring. "My husband is dead, Mr. Dzhugashvilli." 

"Oh I am very well aware of that," Dzhugashvilli said. "I signed the mortality form myself. But I'm not implicating Alexander Miriken. In my experience, the dead do not come back to life and bomb Communist outposts. But I see undeniable similarities between the two criminals. Your husband was also very fond of homemade bombs, no? He made a point to kill Communist party operatives, as does the Sad Clown. But most of all, the Sad Clown's prose is eerily reminiscent of the writings of your husband. But like you said, Alexander Miriken is undeniably dead. So I think to myself, who? Who possibly could be carrying on his legacy. And then it hits me," Dzhugashvilli smiled a very nasty smile. "You." 

Zvana's jaw dropped, her voice filled with outrage. "Mr. Dzhugashvilli!" 

"Who is paying you to do this?" Dzhugashvilli spat. "How much are you receiving? Or are you doing this to make a political statement? No matter how many buildings you bomb, it won't bring your husband back! This is nonsense, Miriken, you can never hope to win against all of the Kremlin--" 

"I am not the Sad Clown," Zvana spat, furious that Dzhugashvilli had even supposed such a thing. "Regardless of my late husband's political beliefs, I am a good Communist--"

There was a slight rap on the door. 

Zvana stood up abruptly. "If you'd excuse me," she said icily. 

"Go right ahead, madam," Dzhugashvilli smiled politely, gesturing towards the door. "Its not every day that one receives guests at..." he glanced at his watch. "Six in the morning." 

Zvana shrugged. "Early to bed, early to rise--" 

"Makes one healthy, wealthy, and wise," Dzhugashvilli finished smoothly. "Or is it just the wealth you're after, Mrs. Miriken?" 

Zvana turned away, her heels clicking on the polished hardwood floor. Just before she reached the door, she hesitated and then abruptly spun around, meeting Dzhugashvilli mocking gaze dead on. "You're may make empty accusations against me as much as you will, Mr. Dzhugashvilli, but there is no solid proof of any wrong doing on my part." 

"Oh, I'm not surprised," Dzhugashvilli smiled. "I suspect you destroyed the evidence yourself." 

There was another, more urgent tap on the door. 

"Don't you have something... bet... better to do that terrorizing old widows?" Zvana said, her voice trembling. 

Dzhugashvilli let the moment hang as he cleared his throat. When he finally spoke, the tiniest of smiles crept across his face. "You're a very good actress, Mrs. Miriken. So was your husband, as a matter of fact. The last thing I want to do is see you packed away to one of the Gulags, but when the stability of the state is threatened, I will not hesitate to do my job." He paused once again, trying to gauge her reaction. She didn't so much as move. "I want you to think very carefully, Mrs. Miriken, think about how much this money or political statement or whatever you're after means to you. Do not insult my intelligence by playing the innocent." He smiled slightly. "I'm not stupid, and sooner or later, I will win." 

To Dzhugashvilli's great surprise, Zvana smiled back, her face lit with a bittersweet grin. 

"That's the problem with gambling," she said quietly, staring Dzhugashvilli straight in the eye. "You can never be entirely sure." He could have no way of knowing that she wasn't referring to the Sad Clown at all, but of an illegal club situated mere meters below where he sat. And with that, Zvana Miriken, wife of Dr. Alexander Miriken, political revolutionary and enemy to the state, opened the door.

There, standing in the jamb and looking perfectly Muggle from the tips of his paten leather shoes to the top of his fedora was Lucius Malfoy. 

__

Oh the shark had pretty teeth dear, and he shows them a pearly white

Malfoy took a step into the room, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip in true James Dean style. 

__

Just a jackknife has Macky dear, and he keeps it out of sight

"Get me a light," he said by way of greeting to Zvana. "I need to light my fag." 

Dzhugashvilli's jaw hung unabashedly open. He had never seen anyone quite like this strange Englishman in the herringbone suit, ordering around the woman he had been trying to get the better of for the greater part of a decade. 

__

When the shark bites, with his teeth dear, scarlet billows start to spread

"That's no way to speak to a lady," Dzhugashvilli said, stepping forward to confront the presumptuous newcomer in the three-piece herringbone suit with the silver and green striped tie. Dzhugashvilli may not trust Miriken past the end of his over-large nose, but he wasn't about to stand and see any lady, dangerous criminal or not, treated so appallingly. 

The newcomer stood stock still for a second and then a loud, grating chuckle escaped his lips. "No way to speak to a lady?" Miriken laughed. He shook his head and his eyes crinkled in scornful mirth. "Just who do you think you are little man?" 

__

Fancy gloves though, wears Macky dear, so there's not a trace of red

At 6'1", Dzhugashvilli had never been called a little man before. The KGB agent puffed out his chest, drawing himself up to his full height, which somehow, still managed to be shorter than Malfoy. "My name is Josef Petrovitch Dzhugashvilli. I am an operative for Soviet Law Enforcement." 

"Oh," Malfoy cooed mockingly. "You're a please officer. How perfectly… quaint." 

"And who, may I ask, are you, young man?" Dzhugashvilli bristled. 

Malfoy smiled suavely, sucking on the end of his still unlit cigarette. "My name is Lucius Malfoy, and I am a very rich wizard." 

Dzhugashvilli raised an eyebrow. "So you're unemployed." 

"What if I told you," Malfoy said, a mocking glint in his eye. "That I'm telling you the truth?" 

"Then I'd have you committed," Dzhugashvilli said without wasting a breath. 

Malfoy laughed, his scornful face crinkled with mirth. "You amuse me, little man. I think that when my master wins, I shall keep you as a pet and have you amuse me with your futile attempts at establishing superiority over me. Quite impossible for a Mudblood, not," he added, with a trace of mirth in his eye, "that you don't try your hardest, I'm sure." 

"Who is this?" Dzhugashvilli turned to Zvana, a sense of warning hitting him dead on. 

"You should leave now," she replied, without really answering his question at all. 

"I think I shall," Dzhugashvilli said slowly, his gaze never wavering from Malfoy's scornful smirk. 

"I'm sure we will meet again," Malfoy said pleasantly as he nibbled on his cigarette again. 

"Not if I can help it," Dzhugashvilli said icily. 

"I know quite personally that there's a lot coming that you won't be able to help," Malfoy said smoothly. He tipped his fedora at the older man. "Until next time then?"

From the dregs of his rusty old memory Dzhugashvilli remembered a line from a brassy old jazz song he had heard so many years ago when he was a lowly infantryman in the war against Germany. "_Fancy gloves though, wears Macky dear, so there's not a trace of red."_ He turned to Malfoy, letting his underhand meaning sink into the wizard's patrician scull. "Until next time, then, Mr. Malfoy." 

And with that, he slipped out the door. 

"What did he mean by that?" Malfoy snapped, snatching his cigarette from his lips angrily. 

"Relax," Zvana purred, walking to the door, which Dzhugashvilli had left wide open and closing it behind her with a faint click. "The Muggle knows nothing. He is what you said, an amusing pet, nothing more." 

"A presumptuous pet," Malfoy pouted, his lip curling in disgust. 

"Here," Zvana closed the distance between them with a few quick strides. Deftly, she plucked his cigarette from between his fingers and waved a hand over it. "_Incendio_," the fag instantly lit up. Giving a dazzling smile, Zvana slipped it between Malfoy's lips, touching the tip of his nose lightly. "My husband put up ward spells before he was... taken, so I have the luxury of using magic whenever I please without those meddling fools from the S.D.E. knowing." She shook her head in what Malfoy presumed was impatience. "But enough idle talk. Sit down Lucius, dear. Ulyanov told me you were coming. To what do I owe this honor?" 

But Lucius was staring at the two government-issue armchairs with disgust. "Which one did the Mudblood sit in?" 

Wordlessly Zvana pointed to the chair on the left. Lucius took the right. He let out a great sigh and took off his fedora, setting it upon his knee. Still lost in his own private world, Malfoy took a long deep drag on his cigarette. "So you've talked to Ulyanov?" 

"He told me you were coming." 

Again, Lucius sighed, stretching himself out in the armchair like a cat in its favorite puddle of sunlight. "I'm seriously considering whether or not to accidentally put place that fool on the wrong end of a killing curse. Put him out of his misery." Lucius was unable to keep the smile from his face when faced with this delightful prospect. "But, business. The British Ministry of Magic has sent two of their Aurors to Moscow to investigate any involvement the S.D.E. may have with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I arranged for Ulyanov to bring the Aurors to your delightful club last night, or rather..." he glanced at his pocket watch. "This morning." 

"Old friends?" Zvana raised an eyebrow. 

Lucius smirked to himself. "You could say that. One of the Aurors is the son of the British Minister of Magic." 

"Ooh," Zvana giggled. "I see where this is going. How deliciously tabloid of you, Lucius!" 

"Oh yes, isn't it?" he smirked, radiating raw smugness. "One of your girls seduced the Minister's son last night. And Ulyanov caught it all on film." 

"Blackmail?" Zvana asked, leaning forward. She was apparently enthralled. 

"Oh, better yet," Lucius smiled conspiratorially. "I'm releasing the photographs straight to the Daily Prophet. It's perfect timing. The Minister's son was just married, his wife is pregnant. The English public will not let his indiscretion go unforgiven. It should be enough to also discredit that idiot Minister Potter. He'll be booted out in shame, leaving the way clear for my master to put one of his faithful followers in the top position." 

"Diabolical," Zvana said, shaking her head in admiration. 

"No," Lucius corrected. "Genius." 

"I think a plan of that caliber calls for a little celebration," Zvana said, abruptly standing up. "And I have just the girl for you. She's a pureblood witch," Zvana said quickly before Lucius could protest. "I know how you feel about the other sort." 

"I don't practice bestiality," Lucius said coldly. 

A look of disgust passed over Zvana's features, disgust she immediately veiled from Malfoy. "Of course not," Zvana said quickly. "I'll get Narcissa, it will be just a moment--" she strode out the door, shutting in behind her. Almost instantly, Zvana collapsed against the wall, heaving a huge breath. She had been beginning to think she would never escape from that room... that man. He was like a tourniquet, growing tighter and tighter around her chest, squeezing her slowly to death. 

"That bad?" 

Zvana jumped as Vlad Ulyanov sidled up beside her, appearing out of nowhere. 

"You scared me," she said, clasping her hand to her frantically beating heart. "I though he'd eat me alive in there." 

Vlad nodded. "Well he is self-confessed Death Eater, and personally, I don't like the way he looks at you." 

"Stop being vulgar," Zvana nudged him, but she was unable to keep a tiny grin from coming to her face. 

"But did our Diablo bite?" Vlad asked, suddenly serious. "Do we have him hooked, line and sinker?" he pressed, pinning Zvana to the wall with his hands. 

She nodded, her head brushing against his chest "He doesn't suspect a thing." 

A fierce smile lit up Vlad's face. "After all these years, we're finally so close--" 

But he was cut off as Zvana cupped his head in her hands and brought his lips down to meet her own. 

His hands wrapped around her back as he pulled her into a tight embrace. "Stay with me," she whispered, his breath lingering on her own lips. 

"I can't," he said, his voice, in a lover's urgency, lowered to a mere whisper. "I have to go play caddy to those two little boys." 

"Don't stay out too long," she said, a half-smile on her face as she ran a finger up the side of his jaw. 

"I'll stay out just as long as I please," he grinned back at her. He paused for a moment, letting her pull up the collar of his overcoat, before turning on his heel and walking to the front door. Within moments, he was outside. 

Zvana slid down the wall until she sat in a little ball on the floor, her knees hugged up against her chest, with only her frantic heartbeats for company. 

__

Oh, and while the King was looking down/The Jester stole his thorny crown…

---- 

"Where the hell did you get that rag?" James clutched Sasha's coat closer to him as he sank down into the bench in front of Miriken's home beside Sirius. It looked surprisingly innocent in the early morning light, the pre-Revolutionary gingerbread architecture making it appear like some sort of childhood fantasy as opposed to an illegal nightclub. 

"The S.D.E. has the house under surveillance," James said, ignoring Sirius's disparaging glance on account of his new coat. "We should leave." 

"If they're watching the house, we're screwed already," Sirius shrugged, leaning forward onto his knees. 

"Where did you go last night?" James said, suddenly realizing how remarkably convenient it was that his friend was sitting on a park bench, right outside the Roulette, waiting for him. 

"Girl," Sirius's tone forbade any questions. "You?" 

"I passed out in the club. The bartender took care of me. Speaking of the bartender--" 

Sirius cut him off. "Someone drugged us last night." 

James stopped, his jaw dropping. "What?" 

"We were drugged last night," Sirius repeated. 

"We just had too much to drink," James said, scoffing at his friend's paranoia. 

"When was the last time you passed out after one shot of vodka?" Sirius pressed. 

"Sirius," he began condescendingly. "Be real. We had more than just one shot--" 

"I was damn near plastered after one shot," Sirius said, meeting his friend's skeptical stare. "And you were too…" 

"Just supposing you're right," James began hesitantly. "Not that I'm saying you are." Sirius rolled his eyes. "Who would do such a thing?" 

"Vladimir Ulyanov," Sirius said flatly. 

James laughed, and then he realized that his friend wasn't kidding. "Vladimir Bleeding Ulyanov? He's working for us, Sirius." 

"So he says," Sirius replied darkly. "I don't trust him at all." 

"Why?" 

"Instinctive. I don't like his look." 

James snickered. "Sirius, the first time you saw Peter, you told me you didn't like his look." 

Sirius shrugged. "So I've been wrong in the past. I still don't think Ulyanov can be trusted." 

James shook his head, unable to see Sirius's point of view. "He seemed like a bit of a weak-willed sot to me. No great criminal mastermind there." 

"If you trust a double agent," Sirius said firmly, "you'll end up dead."

James shrugged. "Fair enough, but I still don't see it your way. We agree to disagree then, eh?" 

Sirius barely nodded agreement. "I'm keeping my eye on him." 

"Is that why you told Ulyanov you were the Minister of Magic's son?" James said, suddenly putting the pieces together. 

"Yeah." 

"I appreciate the sentiment, Sirius, but I can take care of myself," James said, mildly annoyed. 

"I trust you," Sirius said. "I just don't trust him." 

James shook his head. "You're sounding as paranoid as my father." 

"_My_ father," Sirius corrected halfheartedly. His mind was clearly elsewhere. "There's another thing." 

"What?" 

"When I was coming out of the house about fifteen minutes ago, I saw Lucius Malfoy going in." 

James whistled. "Are you sure it was him?" 

"I could recognize that slimy git 100 miles away," Sirius replied darkly. 

"You know what this means?" James said, trying to coax Sirius from his pensive shell. 

"What?" 

"My father may be right about the Communist-death-eater conspiracy." 

Sirius gave a sideways grin. It was the first smile James had coaxed from his friend all morning. In spite of everything, Prongs felt a general wave of relief. If Sirius was laughing, then the Communists could scheme, the Death Eaters plot, but everything would work itself out in the end. "Nah. I'm sure there's a plausible explanation." 

James smirked. "I should tell him your high opinion of his theories."

"You do that," Sirius said, his good humor abandoned in lieu of whatever was hanging over his shoulders. James was willing to bet that Sirius's black mood had something to do with the "girl" but he wasn't about to press Padfoot for information he didn't want to give. Sirius would open up in his own time and until then, James would have to cope with his friend acting like a pessimistic prat. Gryffindor only knows he had done that to Sirius enough in the past, and his friend had borne him with as much grace as it was possible for Padfoot to muster (James was of the educated opinion that _Sirius_ and _grace _were polar opposites, but that was strictly beside the current point). It was high time that he collected his comeuppance. "I couldn't care less what he thought," Padfoot growled. 

"But seriously, no pun intended," James made a feeble joke as Sirius rolled his eyes. He bit his lip as he remembered Sasha's warning. "We're in deep shit here, Padfoot." 

"No _shit_," Sirius iterated darkly, curtain of black hair falling across his eyes, shielding them from view. 

"The bartender who found me in the Roulette, seems to be a part of whatever racket is going on." At no reply from Sirius, James continued. "Sasha, the bartender," he added for Sirius's benefit. "Kept referring to this Boss." 

"Boss?" Sirius raised an eyebrow. "What the hell is this, the Russian Mafia?" His crack seemed more halfhearted and bitter than anything else. 

Biting his lip, James tried to ignore the black mood that had settled upon his friend. "Could be for all we know. Actually," he paused a moment, considering. "That may not be too far off. The Russian Roulette is the Boss's brainchild, so there we have the illegal clubs. Who knows, maybe it's an international drug scam?" 

Sirius muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _dragonshit_, but once again James decided to turn a blind eye. 

"From what Sasha told me, and it isn't a lot mind you, the Boss sounds like some sort of anti-Communist trying to change the government. But..." he bit his lip in confusion. "He deals in black market clubs, which isn't quite usual for a political revolutionary..." James trailed off, utterly bamboozled. 

"So he's a idealistic revolutionary Mafioso," Sirius filled in drolly. "Put him under the same list as Father Christmas, that idiotic Easter Rabbit, and your father's bloody conspiracy." 

"There's nothing wrong with Father Christmas," James smiled, remembering the warm cozy Holidays of his youth, which he had spent half buried in wrapping paper, eating with a piece of his mother's famous Holiday Pixie pie (James often said that the Cornish Pixies tasted like chicken). Christmas would often find him stretched out in front of the fire on the enormous hearth rug embroidered with the Potter coat of arms and family motto: "_Semper Ubi Sub Ubi". _Yes, those had been the days. 

Sirius was nonplussed. He obviously did not hold the holidays in such an esteemed position. James went rather red when his friend raised an eyebrow. "Father Christmas, James? And how old are we?" 

"Erm…" James decided to avoid any further embarrassment and just drop what could prove to be a very damaging topic. "And get this!" James said hastily, leaning forward. "The Boss knows everything about us. He knows I'm married to Lily, and that she's pregnant. How screwed is that?" 

"So we're obviously not as incognito as we thought," Sirius said, brows knitting together. James had the feeling his friend was doggedly rolling their predicament around in his head, trying to make heads or tails of it. By the black look on Padfoot's serious face, Prongs could see that he wasn't getting very far. 

"Sasha is evidently working for this Boss," he said, trying to spark an idea for his friend. Then, he added something that had been gnawing at him all morning. Something that hovered over his head like a tiny storm cloud, ready to burst at any moment. "He told me to leave Moscow before it was too late--" 

"Who? The Boss or Sasha?" Sirius interrupted, spoiling James's entire dramatic effect. 

"Sasha," James replied shortly. "Haven't you been listening? I don't know who the Boss is! When I asked Sasha to tell me the truth," Sirius snorted derisively at this point, "he told me to find the Sad Clown, whoever that is..." 

"I would have just stuck a gun to his head, until he coughed up the information," Sirius said, more to himself than James. 

"A gun?" James asked, drawing a blank. 

"A metal wand Muggles use for killing each other," Sirius explained impatiently. 

"Why would you want to kill Sasha?" James asked, getting quite wide eyed. 

"I wouldn't actually kill him, I'd just threaten," Sirius said, and at the horrified look on James's face he shook his own head. "Just forget it--" 

"Promise me you won't kill anyone, Sirius," James said quietly, his face loosing its puerile gleam. 

After a slight pause, Sirius opened his mouth. "I can't do that, James." He didn't meet Prongs's eyes. 

"Promise me, Sirius," James repeated earnestly, his voice taking on desperate fervor. 

"What if it comes down to one of us or one of them?" Sirius said quietly. "Don't worry about it, James, it'll all be me. You needn't get your pretty little hands dirty," he added bitterly. 

James didn't rise to the bait. "I don't want you to do something you'll regret." 

Sirius spoke his words through clenched teeth. "It's my life, James. My life." 

"I'm just looking out for you," James iterated defensively. 

"I appreciate the sentiment," Sirius said, echoing James's words from mere moments earlier. "But I can take care of myself." His tone ceased the discussion and James leaned back onto the bench, his glasses sliding steadily down the bridge of his nose. 

"Remus," James finally said after a long and tightly strung silence. 

"What of him?" Sirius said, but his mind was already whooshing down James's train of thought. The two of them were that close. In most circumstances, one knew exactly what the other was thinking seconds before he even opened his mouth. 

"We should owl him," James said. "See if he'll crack into the classified files at the Merlin Archives and get us anything they have on the Sad Clown, Russian Roulette, or," he begrudged, "Vladimir Ulyanov." 

Sirius raised one eyebrow. "And where are we going to get an owl around here?" he opened his hands wide, gesturing to the tall concrete buildings sticking like overlarge tumors out of the wasteland of never-ending snow. 

"Erm..." James drew a blank. "Ulyanov?" 

"Yes, Mr. Ulyanov, we want to borrow an owl to write our friend to convince him to look up classified and quite probably damaging information on you, because we think you are full of shit." Sirius finished, batting his eyes sarcastically. "Bloody convincing argument, that one is." 

"You think he's full of shit, not me," James corrected sulkily. "But point taken." 

"No, we'll just have to call Remus," Sirius shrugged. "The Merlin Archives have ties to the Muggle Government so they have to have a telephone. I'm sure I have the number somewhere," he said, reaching into a pocket of his indispensable denim jacket. James couldn't remember a time when he had seen Sirius without the now ragged coat. Even at Hogwarts Padfoot had used to wear the jacket over his school robes giving him an air that girls seemed to find irresistibly debonair. James privately thought that it had made him look like either a complete fashion victim or someone very ahead of the trends, it all depended if you saw the glass half empty or half full. "The only problem I can see," Sirius continued, oblivious to his friend's sudden interest in his fashion sense, or lack thereof. "Is if someone has set up a wire tap on the phone..."

"Phone?" James sounded more than a little unsure. 

Sirius smiled. "It's a Muggle thing." 

"Shhh-" James jerked his head away from Padfoot. "Your favorite friend, twelve o'clock." 

Sirius turned his head, just in time to see Vladimir Ulyanov shutting the door to Miriken's idyllic home. His tiny eyes darted across the snow-covered street, finally settling on Sirius and James. 

Sarcastically, Sirius waved a hand. 

Ulyanov didn't return the gesture. As the informant began to walk down the stone steps of Miriken's home to cross the street towards them, James gripped Sirius's arm. "Look at his face," he whistled. 

A thick silver scar that had been hidden by the vodka-drenched ambiguity of the previous night snaked up the left side of Ulyanov's face. It abruptly stopped just below his eye and continued down into the depths of his coat, cutting their informant's face into jagged relief. The scar still held some of the raw horror of the original wound. 

"What do you think happened to him?" James breathed, his jaw dropping. 

Sirius leaned forward. "Why don't you ask him?" he insinuated mischievously. 

"Hah," James said drolly as he drew up the collar of Sasha's coat. The rough wool scathed the soft flesh of his throat. 

"Where was the scar last night?" Sirius muttered quietly to himself, eyebrows knitting together. 

James snorted. "I bet it's a bloody _conspiracy_, Padfoot," he iterated rather sarcastically. 

Sirius shrugged off James's sardonic reply. Instead of replying with a cynical cut of his own, Sirius leaned back against the bench, his features arranging themselves into a mask of bored contentment. "Its show time," he murmured under his breath to no one in particular. 

Ulyanov stepped up onto the curb and turned to face the Aurors. 

----

Lucius's eyebrow arched like a taut bowstring as Zvana led the girl into the room. 

She wasn't ugly by any means, in fact Lucius might go as far as to deem the girl beautiful, a term he very rarely applied to his numerous _putas,_ numbering from the incredibly valuable underlings such as Zvana to the bumbling fools like Ulyanov. He was strongly tempted to put that sorry excuse for a man out of his misery. But not now. Now there was the girl. 

Oh, the girl. 

Her silvery blond curls hung loose about her shoulders, shimmering like silken moonlight. Her high cheekbones and almond eyes gave her almost as Asiatic flavor, though her bright blue irises pointed to more than a few Slavic ancestors. Yes, she was a fine piece of flesh. 

She was dressed the part. On top, she was wearing an old gray sweatshirt, factory issue by the disgusting look of it. The slut had cut the neck out of her shirt with the idea to expose her milky white neckline to where it curved into the gentle hills of her shoulders. She was like a beautiful porcelain doll, ready and waiting for him to shatter. 

He took a drag of his fag. Somehow, the _shavala_ had squeezed herself into a tarty red skirt with leather lacings up the side that revealed far more than it covered. Her whory fishnet stockings were held up by two twin garters, embroidered MARX and ENGLES, respectively. How delightfully cynical. It was a joke from a woman who had grown up in a word where Communism whored itself to the powerful, where corruption was the norm. 

Lucius smirked; he enjoyed a woman with a sense of humor, especially since he had none himself. The touch was probably Zvana's though, this particular tart looked a little too much like a kneazle in the headlights to have thought up something so wickedly underhand. Lucius scowled. If it wasn't for Miriken's overly excessive grief over her long dead husband, he would have had her a long time before now. She was one of the few people he could stand talking to for a few moments without feeling dirty-- contaminated. He wouldn't go quite so far as to say that he actually liked Miriken, she was simply tolerable. Tolerable was about as good as it got for Lucius Malfoy. 

Perceptive as always, Zvana flashed him a quick smile that he didn't return before skulking out of the door and into the hallway, leaving them alone together. 

He stared at the tart for a moment, cool gray eyes narrowing. Her hand was trembling. 

He smiled, relishing her discomfort. Quietly, he reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a fresh fag. "_Incindio_," the flame leaped from the tip of his finger to the end of the cigarette. "Can you do that?" he said, acknowledging her for the first time. He'd rather be damned and on a broomstick straight to hell before he so much as touched a Mudblood. 

She nodded. 

"Good," he hissed, taking a particularly long drag on his cigarette. The smoke floated around his head like some horrible travesty of a halo. "Now, take off your shirt." 

----

"_Zdravstvuite_, Comrade," Sirius said sarcastically as Ulyanov focused his gaze upon the two Aurors. "See? I'm learning." 

"Congratulations, I trust that's very difficult for you, Mr. Potter," Ulyanov sneered, his fur hat pulled low over his calculating eyes. The dislike in his tone was almost palpable. 

"Yeah," Sirius snapped sarcastically. "If I keep going this strong, pretty soon I'll be able to see through your condescending insults." 

"Erm," James cut off his friend before he made the worst of an already sticky situation. "We're very glad you're able to take time away from your busy schedule to aid us, Mr. Ulyanov." 

Ulyanov smiled hastily. "One of you patronizes and the other blatantly insults. If it wasn't for the utter corruption in the S.D.E., I don't think I'd bother with either of you." 

"So that's why you're helping us?" James asked, remembering one of his father's countless lessons on interrogation. He could hear his patriarch's voice ringing in his ears, dredged up from the depths of his subconscious where it had undoubtedly been hiding: "Rule One: establish a personal connection with the subject. Rule Two: If that fails, use torture devices." James gave their tight-lipped informant what he hoped was a disarming smile, as he didn't think the chances of hustling Ulyanov into a convenient neighborhood iron maiden were all that high, even in Soviet Moscow. "You think the S.D.E. is corrupt? Why don't you tell us more about your point of view? We will be glad to listen." The look on Sirius's face stated quite plainly that he was sure that James had just gone inexcusably insane. 

"I don't have to answer any of your questions, Mr. Black," Ulyanov said smoothly, without so much as batting a eyelash. "I am not a case study." 

"I never said that--" James began, feeling rather miffed that his offer of a friendly ear had been mercilessly rejected. 

"All right," Sirius interrupted, his eyes focused on Ulyanov and Ulyanov alone. "We'll skip the pleasantries, eh?" 

"Fair enough," Ulyanov stroked his chin, considering Sirius's words. James shivered as his bony finger ran up and down the contours of his disfiguring scar. 

Sirius stood up. Even at his full height, he was a good foot shorter than Ulyanov. "Does the name Lucius Malfoy sound familiar to you?" 

"No," Ulyanov said after a moment of apparent consideration. "It doesn't." 

"Funny," Sirius raised any eyebrow, "as he walked into the house you just exited." He pointed to Miriken's home, pausing dramatically. "Are you sure you've never heard of him?" 

"Yes," Ulyanov sneered, not in the least bit impressed with Sirius's over-confident posturing. He made it quite clear that his already threadbare patience was rapidly raveling away. "Don't patronize me, Mr. Potter. Zvana receives all kinds of visitors that I know nothing of." 

"So you're friends with Mrs. Miriken?" Sirius prodded, crossing his arms in front of his chest. 

"I'm no intimate," Ulyanov replied coldly. "I am merely a customer. We've talked face to face two, three times at the most." 

"What about the Sad Clown?" 

Ulyanov jerked his head towards James, all color draining from his already wan face. "What?" 

"The Sad Clown," James repeated. "Have you heard of him?" 

"Of course," Ulyanov snapped, crossing his arms defensively. There was a slight pause as both of the Aurors waited for their "informant" to continue. When it seemed like no reply was coming, Sirius prodded Ulyanov with a sarcastic: 

"Enlighten us." 

Ulyanov gave the Aurors a sulky look. Looking extremely put-upon, he started his story. "The first signs of the Sad Clown were in the province of Kolyma, about 4 years ago. There was an explosion in one of the mineshafts, which was later traced to a homemade bomb. One-hundred twenty eight of the prisoners working in the mine were killed in the explosion and fourteen of the soldiers guarding them. At first the authorities thought nothing of it, after all, this was a mine and explosions happen all the time, but by then explosions were picking their way across the continent, over the Urals, and finally to right here in Moscow. Always the bombs were home-made and always the causalities were both civilian and military. The authorities had no choice but to pin it on the work of one man. They have since received a few letters from this psychopath, claiming responsibility for the blasts and demanding equal rights, redistribution of the wealth, your typical idealistic Marxist blather. Each of these letters is signed the Sad Clown." 

"In short," Ulyanov continued, his scowl growing, "the Sad Clown is a terrorist of the worst kind. He's responsible for countless civilian and military deaths, I think the current total is around 1,100. He's an underground threat. No one knows quite who he is, except that he's a psychopathic fool. And not only that, he's very dangerous to the stability of the state." Not even Ulyanov could say this without a smirk. 

"Last time we checked, you were no fan of the state," Sirius challenged. 

"Oh?" Ulyanov chuckled derisively. "You're checking up on me, are you?" 

"Answer the question" James said coldly. Sirius turned around in surprise and shot his friend a grateful look for his support. James smiled back, but he was far from convinced that Ulyanov was the source of all of the present mayhem. 

Ulyanov gave James a withering look. "The Sad Clown is a clumsy, needlessly violent fool who is seeking attention more than any political objectives. It is only a matter of time before he is sent back to the Gulags. I do not wish for that unfortunate fate to be mine, so I approach my rebellion against the state in a systematic untraceable way, like passing information." 

"In other words, you're a coward," Sirius hissed. 

Ulyanov raised an eyebrow. "If slaughtering innocent civilians is your idea of valor, Mr. Black, then I'm afraid we have a much larger problem on our hands than a Communist-Death-Eater conspiracy." Sirius quietly seethed, angry at Ulyanov for easily disarming him in the quick verbal skirmish. Ulyanov ignored his unspoken victory and pressed on without drawing a breath. "I have to return to the S.D.E offices or my absence will arouse suspicion. I'll contact you boys later, hm?" 

"Don't bother," Sirius muttered under his breath as their informant turned on his heel and stalked away into the blinding sheet of snow.

"It doesn't look like he's too high up in the Roulette hierarchy," James thought aloud, huddling deeper inside Sasha's coat. Moscow was colder than his wildest imaginings. Besides the blanket of icy white that covered everything for hundred of miles around, their was an omnipresent wind, biting deep and hard, chilling Prongs to the bone. James could see quite easily why Russia had produced some of the most feared dark wizards in Magical history. It was hard to believe that any wizards other than the toughest and the most brutal could ever exist here. 

"Not so," Sirius repeated. Even in his flimsy denim jacket, Sirius seemed unfazed by the brutal cold, though James supposed his coat had some sort of warming charm upon it. His friend was ignoring the snow completely, his eyes focused of Ulyanov's retreating back. "He called Miriken Zvana. They're on first name terms." 

James paused for a moment before replying, a slow mocking smile working its way across his frostbitten features. "Well, Sherlock, hats off to you--" 

He was cut off as Sirius stuffed a handful of snow into his open mouth. "Do shut up, my dear Watson."

----

"They've been developed," Lucius shut the door to Zvana's office behind him, redoing his silver and green striped tie with one hand at the same time. He had left the girl on the couch, futilely trying to keep her beside him with the whispers of sweet, insubstantial nothings. 

"Excellent," Malfoy said as he plucked the envelope from Ulyanov's outstretched hand. "You took these last night?" 

"After I finished receiving your orders," Despite the fact that he towered over Malfoy, Ulyanov managed to look remarkably diminutive. "May I take this opportunity to thank you from dropping your most important business in Spain--" 

"No," Lucius snapped, deftly flicking the envelope's lip open. These photographs were the key to all of his meticulously laid plans. They would single-handedly pave the way from his master's rise to supreme power and he would be remembered as the Death Eater who had made Voldemort's empire possible. He would rise above them all, the first among a tribe of winners. 

Heart beating fiercely underneath his three-piece suit, Malfoy slid the photographs from their envelope. There was a sickly scrape of paper against paper as he turned his eyes to the moving images. 

Ulyanov's heart jumped in his chest as the photographs slipped through Malfoy's fingers, fluttering through the air to lie still on the floor. There was a positively murderous silence, as the matador licked his lips. 

"Is there a problem?" Ulyanov said nervously, having the funny feeling that Malfoy was about to go for his throat. 

"No, no problem," Malfoy scoffed, "Only this isn't James Potter." 

"Of course its James Pott--" Ulyanov began. Then he broke off as the realization dawned upon his face. "Those little _gov'nky_--" 

"This is Sirius Bloody Black," Malfoy screeched. "Perhaps the most notorious womanizer in the entire history of the Auror Bureau. There are dozens of photographs just like this one. I send it to the Prophet, I get laughed out of--" Malfoy broke his tirade off, suddenly staring at Ulyanov. "You knew, didn't you?" 

"What?" Ulyanov laughed nervously. "I had no idea he wasn't the Minister's son! Black, you say? Black told me he was the one, how could I have known differently? I know nothing about England! I--"

"Don't lie to me!" Malfoy yelled, reaching forward and gripping Ulyanov by the throat. "You knew! Maybe they switched names; I don't give a shit! But you knew the man you were photographing was not the Minister's son. I can see it in your eyes, you lying little fool. I always know!" 

"Little fool?" Ulyanov took a step forward, kicking the photographs across the floor, much to their occupant's chagrin. "I think it is dubious who the little fool is, Mr. Malfoy." It was the first time that day that he seemed to be taller than Lucius. 

And Lucius didn't like it. Without so much as blinking an eyelid, the smaller man swung his fist hard. It connected almost immediately with Ulyanov's jaw. A thin dribble of blood trickled down the older man's chin. Lucius half-noticed that some of Ulyanov's blood clung to his own hand, staining his porcelain skin a deep red. Coolly, Ulyanov wiped his blood off his chin, regarding Lucius with the utmost scorn. "You're always," he said quietly, "such a gentleman, Mr. Malfoy." 

For once, Lucius didn't have a glib underhand barb ready and waiting to fire. Ulyanov reached down toward the other man's mouth and pulled the cigarette out of Malfoy's mouth. "Smoking is bad for you. That's the one worthwhile thing I learned in medical school." 

"That's why I smoke," Lucius supplied sulkily as Ulyanov dropped his smoking fag on the floor and put it out with the heel of his shoe. 

"Then you need more help than I can supply," Ulyanov snapped, raising a gray eyebrow. "Though that's hardly a revelation." 

"Just who do you think you are?" Malfoy sneered, a red and angry flush rising to his face as Ulyanov surveyed him with a slightly amused expression. It was as if his servant had undergone a transformation. The sniveling fool of a few moments previous had, at the drop of a photograph, become a slick foe cutting him to pieces with minimal effort. Though he wouldn't admit it to Ulyanov, Malfoy felt rather dazed.

"Your superior," Ulyanov drawled, running his finger up and down the line of his scar. "As much as you like to pretend you're a tough man with your chain smoking and your asshole of a master, you're as much of a clueless child as those two English pups I've been forced to escort all over Moscow. You're in too deep, Mr. Malfoy." 

"I--"

Ulyanov wasn't about to let Lucius get a word in. "I have you all figured out, Malfoy. You were about to insult me back there. If there's anything you don't like, it's being reminded of your own inferiority. That's why you're obsessed with all of that pureblooded shit, so you can somehow feel some sort of," Ulyanov's lip curled in scorn. "Genetic dominance. That went out of vogue with the fall of the Third Reich, Mr. Malfoy. But," a thin smile curved across Ulyanov's face, twisting his scar into a half-moon. "You have no idea what I'm taking about. That's the main weakness of most pureblood wizards. You're so removed from Muggle culture. It had its bonuses, that I don't deny, but it also means you don't learn from the Muggles's mistakes." 

"You don't know the first thing about me," Malfoy sneered. He was overwhelmed with anger, hate, and though he'd hardly even admit it to himself, fear. This man, whoever he was, was not the Vladimir Ulyanov he'd grown to know and scorn. 

"Of course I know about you," Ulyanov snorted, walking in a tight circle around Malfoy. "How do you think I was able to remain as your servant for so long? I played up to your insecurities, always flattering, always sniveling. You suspected nothing, other than that I may be a halfwit. That's your Achilles heel, Mr. Malfoy, you underestimate other people. That," he said, with a touch of relish. "Will be your downfall. Never did you suspect that I may be holding all the strings." 

Malfoy's lip curled in absolute fury, but he couldn't find his voice, it was lost somewhere between the twin poles of hate and terror. 

"How do you like being the marionette, Mr. Malfoy?" Ulyanov smirked, leaning closer to Lucius, so that he was whispering in his ear. "Watch out for the Sad Clown, she has her eye on you." 

"What is this nonsense!" Malfoy twisted away, groping wildly inside his overcoat for his package of fags. 

Ulyanov held up his hand, revealing a box of cigs. "Missing something?" 

"Give me that--" 

Ulyanov shook his head. "I told you, cigarettes are bad for you. Next time, you need to listen to what I have to say, Mr. Malfoy." 

"You will pay for this," Lucius hissed, but his threat sounded empty to even his own ears. 

Ulyanov found it hilarious. He let loose a long laugh before shaking his head in what could be mirth, or just sympathy. "I have been setting you up, Mr. Malfoy. That was very good, I didn't expect you to catch on so quickly." 

"Who the hell are you?" 

Ulyanov pulled up his coat collar, his gray hair blending in with the ratty wool of his government-issue overcoat. "Vladimir Ulyanov. And if you had done your background research, you would know exactly what I meant." With that, he dropped the cigs scornfully on the floor, kicking them towards Lucius's feet. "Here. You'll need these more than ever in the coming days." 

Before Lucius had a chance to reply, Ulyanov had disapparated, leaving him to curse the empty air. 

----

"Are you sure this will work?" 

Sirius gave James a withering look as he put the telephone receiver to his ear. "Just trust me."

James laughed hollowly. 

Sirius rolled his eyes. "I'll ignore that vote of confidence." 

"Be my guest," James snorted into Sasha's ratty coat. 

"Watch and learn, grasshopper," Sirius said as he quietly dialed the number. Even in the non-capitalist world of Soviet Russia the two Aurors had managed to find a pay phone, yet another State hypocrisy to add to the rapidly growing list. 

"What in Griffindor's name is it doing?" James jumped back in alarm as the phone began to ring. 

Sirius grabbed him by the scruff of his coat and dragged him into the booth. "That's how it's supposed to happen," he said in a long-suffering tone. 

"Are you sure?" James said nervously, still staring at the phone as if he was afraid it would explode. 

Sirius didn't even bother to reply. After about twenty rings, he heard a slight click. 

"Merlin Archives. This is Horace speaking, how may I help you?" It was a relief to hear good old Queen's English after twenty-four hours of non-stop Russian. Sirius hadn't realized how tense he had been until he found himself letting out a long sigh. 

"Yes," Sirius spoke into the receiver, trying to ignore James's incoherent exclamations of excitement. "Is Remus Lupin in?" 

"It talks, Sirius! It talks!" 

Sirius bent closer to the receiver, cupping his hand around the mouthpiece. "May I inquire who is calling?" the voice on the other end said suspiciously. These were dark days in Wizarding England, days when Voldemort's spies lurked in every puddle of shadow and in every deserted alley. The old adage "trust no one" had been resurrected with new meaning, and wizards everywhere regarded strangers as enemies. The voice's suspicion was perfectly understandable. 

"Yeah," Sirius replied. "This is the Minister of Magic. It's urgent." He wasn't quite sure if Horace would let him through to Remus if he was anyone less official. 

"Oh!" Horace sounded surprised. "Well, right away then, Mr. Potter. Would you hold on a moment?" 

"Sure," Sirius said, as the sound of breathing ceased from the other end of the line. 

James was still floored by the success of the phone. "How do those Muggles think of these things?" He gaped in wonderment. "It's incredible." 

"Bloody magical it is," Sirius said with a grin as he switched the phone to the other ear, tapping his foot impatiently. He had never been a fan of being put on hold. 

"Hallo Sirius," a voice, unmistakably Remus's, drifted in from the other end of the line. 

"How did you know it was me?" Sirius asked. 

"Who else would claim to be the Minister of Magic?" Sirius didn't have a reply for that, so he just let Remus continue. "I thought you were in Russia with James."

"I am," Sirius said. 

"Where are you calling from?" Remus asked. 

"A pay phone." 

"There are pay phones in Soviet Russia?" 

"Evidently so," Sirius snapped, "and every second you spend wondering about it eats up another one of our rubles." 

Remus cut straight to the chase. "Well, what damage control do you need done?" 

"What makes you think we need damage control?" Sirius said, eyebrows knitting together. 

Remus's silence said more than 1000 words. 

"All right, all right," Sirius began. "You know us far too well for your own good, you know that?" 

"I figured that out a while ago, Sirius," Remus said in a long-suffering tone. 

"Well, it's not quite damage control," Sirius began hesitantly. "We want you to break into the classified section of the Merlin Archives." 

Originally Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs had all enlisted in the Auror training program. Those had been the days when they had all been young, idealistic, and utterly inseparable. Of course Voldemort was going to be beaten and they would be the ones to do it. On the eve of their Hogwarts graduation the boys had made a pact to "Become Aurors and fight in the war against Voldemort until our gums are bloody from hanging on by the skin of our teeth or until we beat the bastard." Sirius had coined the phrase, and when James made the offhand remark that it sounded like something his father had written a pillow fight ensued, the ferocity of which quite unlike anything that had ever occurred in the entire illustrious Hogwarts history of Messieurs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. 

But the pact had been broken within days of its making. Peter dropped out in the first few days of Auror training, and Remus was expelled by Barty Crouch himself a mere four weeks later. Crouch insisted it was because Remus wasn't ruthless enough for hunting dark wizards, and though Sirius was privately inclined to agree, he thought the real reason behind his friend's expulsion had more to do with his own dark magic origins than his temperament. 

Lycanthropy or not, Remus had managed to get a job as a research librarian at the Merlin Archives, a joint project between the Ministries of Magic of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The purpose of the Archives was to document every facet of magic in the British Isles from Charing Cross road to Confrwiddla the Cantakerous's rebellion of 1543. As an added bonus, the four Ministries had combined their classified intelligence files, forming one of the most comprehensive collections of sensitive information in the Wizarding world. 

If there was dirt on anyone chances were that it would be in the Merlin Archives. Sirius had it on Remus's authority that his own file was thirty-two centimeters thick, most of which he guessed was handwritten complaints from James's father and all of his (numerous) ex-girlfriends. Of course Remus strictly wasn't supposed to be in the classified section of the Merlin Archives, but Sirius hadn't corrupted Moony for nothing. 

On the whole, Remus was a much better librarian that he would have ever been as an Auror and Sirius wasn't quite sure if his friend would betray the institution that had taken him in by stealing classified information. He held his breath, waiting for his friend's response. He shouldn't have worried. "What do you need?" Remus said with a excruciatingly long-suffering note in his voice. 

Sirius bent down closer to the mouthpiece, half afraid that an S.D.E agent was peering over his shoulder. He got that feeling in Moscow, as if someone's eyes were constantly on the back of his neck. It put him off guard, as he wasn't usually skittish in the least. "Get us everything you know about a man named Vladimir Ulyanov." 

"Hmmm... I'm sure I've heard that name somewhere. Is he a Death Eater?" Remus asked. 

"Not as far as we know, though I wouldn't be surprised," Sirius replied. 

"Sirius doesn't like his look," James said loudly so that Remus could hear. The skepticism in Prongs's voice was palpable. 

"Didn't you say that about Peter?" Remus said from the other end of the line, mildly amused.

Sirius shot James a dirty look. "Well I'm starting to like the look of a certain Mr. Potter less and less." Remus snorted on other end, muffling a laugh. "Ulyanov is actually James's father's contact in the S.D.E." Sirius said, trying to get back to business before they run out of change and were forced to cut the call off. 

"Double-agent," Remus said quietly, suddenly deep in thought. It was a special talent that was uniquely Remus, the ability to be laughing and joking one moment and lost in his own tiny world the next. "You can never trust a spy." 

"If you can," Sirius added, breaking into his friend's reverie. "Be a good dog and look up someone known as the Sad Clown--" 

"Tell him Zvana Miriken," James added from his spot behind Sirius. 

"And Zvana Miriken," Sirius channeled to Remus. "Send it by owl, these Russians are nutters and there's some sort of a ban against using magic, which we've already broken once," Remus muttered something sounding suspiciously like "of course". "Oh," Sirius added as an afterthought. "If you can, get us some scarves; it's fucking freezing." 

"I told you it would be cold," Remus said peevishly. "You're wearing that denim jacket of yours, aren't you? A denim jacket. In Moscow. In January." 

"Thanks for the tip, Mum," Sirius said sarcastically. 

"My pleasure." 

James suddenly spoke up. His initial fear of the phone seemed to be completely gone. "Tell him to tell Lily that I love her." 

"Tell Lily that I love her," Sirius said automatically. It was barely out of his mouth when he realized it sounded wrong. "No I mean, James says to tell Lily that he loves her..." 

Remus sighed rather obnoxiously. "Anything else? Do you want me to pick up milk, oil your bike, and feed the cat?" 

Sirius smirked. "Well, if you're offering--" It was a good thing that his money ran out there and then or else poor Remus would be running errands all night. 

"Well," James remarked, leaning nonchalantly against the door of the phone booth. "That was a pleasant surprise, wasn't it?" 

"Never thought it would work," Sirius said in mock-sincerity. "Very funny, those fellytones." 

His sarcasm was lost on James. "Well, there's only one place to go now."

"Where?" 

Now it was James's turn to grin impishly. "Back to the Roulette I suppose. After all, its the only lead we've got." 

----

"Have you ever wanted to destroy something beautiful?" he said, slamming the door of Zvana's office so hard that it almost fell from its fragile hinges. 

She stared at him, he wide mooncalf eyes unreadable as the collar of her decrepit shirt slid down her painfully thin arm, revealing a pure white shoulder. 

Milky. 

Whole. 

Still staring at her, waiting for a reply that he knew would never come; Lucius reached into the pocket of his overcoat. Fingers shaking, he raised the cigarette to his lips, lighting it with a wave of his hand. He took a long drag. 

The smoke filled his mouth. 

His head. 

His lungs. 

Soothing, smothering, suffocating. 

Maybe if he smoked enough cigarettes, it would pull the pillowcase over his own head once and for all, finish what he had tried so long ago to begin. 

Death was a way out to Lucius. Escape from all the griping, sniveling, Mudblood sonsofbitches who picked on his carcass like maggots, trying to change him into one of them. Contaminate him. 

Death was an escape from his endless self-imposed quarantine against the world. 

But he didn't have the courage to kill himself. 

So he killed everyone around him. 

The smoke of the cigarette covered him like a blanket, his only regret was that there were no hands to hold it down. His own hung by his lips, trembling as the fag littered hot ash across the hardwood floor. 

He turned his eyes to her. She wasn't staring at him anymore; instead, her eyes were focused his fingers, hanging listlessly by his mouth. 

Blood. Ulyanov's blood. 

Oh, God-- he had touched that bastard's blood, he his hands were coated in it. 

Fuck, Fuck, he needed smoke, he needed scouring, he needed--

Her. 

She looked up at him, blue eyes as pales as the snow falling outside, covering Miriken's gingerbread home in a sickly sweet white frosting. 

Don't eat the house, Hansel and Gretel, don't eat it or the witch will bake you for dinner. Candy walls aren't always sugar sweet and things are never what they seem.

"Have you ever wanted to destroy something beautiful?" he repeated, bending down so he was on the same level as her oh-so-innocent moonbeam eyes. "Answer me!" 

"No," she replied, voice trembling as he wrapped his hands around her slender throat. 

"You will," he laughed. "You will..." her jugular throbbed just under his thumb. 

Her breath came in short intervals of terror. He laughed again, enjoying the effect he was having on the mooncalf girl. She was so fragile, like a tiny little dove. 

Doves are the birds of love. 

He told her so. 

And she just shook her head. "There isn't any love here." 

"No," he said quietly, letting go of her throat. "No, there isn't." 

She blinked at him, utterly abashed that anyone had agreed with anything she had to say. The girl was afflicted with the condition of worthlessness, believing completely that she was worth nothing to anyone in the world. And the sad thing was, she was right. 

"There is no such thing as love," he murmured, staring at her with a sudden respect. "But there's business." 

She didn't reply. She wasn't really listening to anything he had to say, she was too wrapped up in the trials of her own soul to even begin to care about his. Her blue eyes darted over his shoulder to the frost-covered window, looking for an escape. 

He noticed this, and he decided he didn't like her mind wandering. He reached out and firmly gripped her chin, wrenching her gaze to meet his own. "Do you understand what I'm saying, girl?" 

Dumbly, she shook her head no. He got the feeling that she was absolutely terrified, and he got a small chill of pleasure from that, from the power he had over her.

"I'm saying that I'd be very good for you," he hissed, leaning forward so that there were mere inches between their faces. Mere inches of frigid air, strung with palpable tension. 

"What…" she began hesitantly. "What do you want with me?" 

He leaned back, surveying her as one would a pound of flesh at market. "I'm not sure." 

"Is that--"

He cut her off. "You're surprisingly beautiful, you do know that? I was expecting some dirty little stick of a whore like the rest of Zvana's brood," he paused, spinning her around with his hands. "How much do you weigh?" he abruptly barked. 

"110 pounds," she began nervously. 

"110 pounds of flesh for me," he smiled nastily. "For free." A chill ran up her spine as he placed his hand upon her shoulder. "Does that sound like a good business deal to you, whore?" 

"I don't--" 

He wasn't really interested in her reply. "A diamond in the rough, for nothing at all…" he stared at her through cold gray eyes half closed, nevertheless piercing icicles into her soul. "You know what they used to do when a landlord would receive a new piece of property? A silver plate, a set of candlesticks, or," he gave a sick smile, "a bitch for his hounds?" 

"What would they do?" she asked quietly, as he tightened his grip upon her shoulder. She didn't really want to know the answer, but fear of the fingers digging into her flesh made her ask the question. 

He pursed his lips together, finger lingering on a spot on his forearm. "They'd brand it. Should I brand you, girl?" 

Her mouth opened, buy no sound came out, heart beating in the frenzied rhapsody of terror. 

"No," he said quietly, cigarette smoke hanging about his head like the horrible travesty of a halo. "No. I don't need to brand you. You're already mine, heart, body, and soul. I need no mark to prove it." 

He let go of her, watching apathetically as she fled from the room in terror, though a small smile laced across his lips when he heard the terrified sound of her sobs echoing in the hallway outside. 

__

Have you ever wanted to destroy something beautiful?

He wasn't really speaking to her at all. 

__

Candy walls aren't always sugar sweet and things are never what they seem.

So he took the lit cigarette from his lips, dangling it almost lazily between his fingers. 

I need to brand you. You're not mine, heart, body, and soul. I need a mark to prove it.

He inhaled deeply as he jammed the butt deep into the soft flesh of his own hand--

__

"Have you ever wanted to destroy something beautiful?" he repeated, bending down so he was on the same level as her oh-so-innocent moonbeam eyes…

"No!" she replied, voice trembling as he wrapped his hands around her slender throat. 

"You will," he laughed. "You will..." 

There was an angry red weal in the continuity of his skin, a place where charred flesh met smooth porcelain, a scar that could never completely heal. 

----

January 1, 1980

Offices of the Auror Bureau

London, United Kingdom

Moody tapped his gnarled fingers on the hard resin of the table, surveying the motley crew he had hand-picked from the best of the best at the already elite Auror Bureau. With ever new Muggle-baiting and torched home, Moody gained fresh awareness of how urgent their fight against Voldemort was. As for Moody himself, he didn't even sleep in his own bed anymore. He was forced to move from house to anonymous house like a Lethifold in the night, lest the Death Eaters finally put a finger upon his whereabouts. Moody's old adage of "Constant Vigilance!" had gained new meaning in these dark days, days when there was no one to trust but your own feeble wits and nothing to count on but the clothes on your back, and even their loyalty was dubious. 

With every fresh day, Moody was acutely reminded of how tenuous and vulnerable their position was. He felt as if he was trying to plug a broken dike with just his pinkie, a finger holding back the flood of Voldemort's forces. And when the day came that his dike buckled, his last defense torched and sundered, Moody could only hope that he and his motley crew of Aurors would be ready to face the howling storm of Death Eaters. 

But was hope enough? 

For now, Moody thought ruefully to himself, it would have to be. Hope was one thing that even Voldemort could not steal. 

Thanks to the propaganda machines at the Department of Misinformation the greater wizarding public didn't know how tight their situation really was. The average witch or wizard off the street believed that the Ministry was winning the war against Voldemort, but that was far, far from the truth. 

Moody was counting the days until all hell broke loose. 

And so he had assembled his motley crew of Aurors, the best of the best to somehow try and breach the ever-growing advantage between the Aurors and the Death Eaters, and try, despite the fact that they were outfoxed, outnumbered, and outwitted, to dig the Ministry out of the grave that Voldemort had so easily pushed them into. 

Always alert, Moody's eyes traveled down the right side of the table, and as his piercing gaze lingered upon each face, a dossier immediately opened in his mind, revealing each of the Auror's name, rank, and credentials, what they could do to possibly tip the balance of the war in the Ministry's favor. 

To Moody's direct left were Frank and Lottie Longbottom, a husband and wife team of Aurors known for their bravery, daring, and selfless courage. They were some of Moody's staunchest supporters. However, Lottie was already showing signs of a pregnancy and Moody feared that he would be forced to take her out of the line of fire any week now. When the balance between stasis and subjugation was so intensely fragile, she would be sorely missed. 

Pushing Lottie and her pregnancy from his mind, Moody continued sizing up his troops. Next to the Longbottoms was Arabella Figg, an wizened wisp of a witch who was rumored to be older than Hogwarts itself. Figg was not often seen without one of her innumerable pet kneazles, and one was playing on her lap right now, swinging two and fro on her hand-knitted shawl. Despite her harmless-old-bat appearance, Moody had learned long ago not to underestimate Arabella, for the ancient Auror could speak almost any language on Earth and besides that, she had a keen mind for code breaking. 

Next to Figg sat the only American present. Mundungus Fletcher was from somewhere in the Southern States and had an absolutely ridiculous fashion of talking, he used phrases like "hot as the hair on a hog's belly" and "blushing like a baby's behind", but Fletcher was a Master of Disguise. He could take a man, cast a few glamours, call up an illusion or two and God be damned if his own mother knew him. Moody often found Mundungus's services much more valuable than the tried and true Polyjuice, which wore off in a single hour, as often the Aurors couldn't afford such crippling time restraints. 

Fletcher was talking animatedly to Charlie O'Reilly, whose flaming red hair stood out like a beacon against the drab gray walls of the Auror Bureau. Charlie was a damn good Auror, but he wasn't a patch on his sister. Moody's elite team had suffered a brutal blow when Molly O'Reilly had married one of the innumerable Weasley brood and punched off a couple of kids. Moody had tried everything within his power to try and get Molly to stay, but she had adamantly refused, saying: "It's all right if I put myself at risk, Alastor, but I can't place my family in such jeopardy. Besides, who in Gryffindor's name would cook dinner?" 

Next to Charlie was Severus Snape, brooding and aloof as always. Moody couldn't quite say why he had included Snape in his hand-picked squadron, the former Slytherin wasn't an especially adept Auror, though he was far from inept. Moody would credit Snape's appointment to instinct alone, which he had learned to trust more than his critical judgment over his many years as chief of the Auror Bureau. 

Finally, next to Snape was Albus Dumbledore, who, strictly speaking, wasn't an Auror at all, though any anti-Voldemort group was incomplete without the headmaster of Hogwarts in attendance. Dumbledore was the rallying figurehead of the Dark Lord's resistance, and rightfully so. 

Moody cleared his throat. It was time for the meeting to come to order. "I realize this is New Years Day and I have stolen you away from your various celebrations," he began gruffly. It was the closest to an outright apology that Moody would get, though most of those present recognized and appreciated his sentiment. "But the Dark Lord does not observe holidays, and right now, he is the one calling the shots." Moody cleared his throat, drumming his fingers in the table. "You are all undoubtedly familiar with our Minister's ideas on the USSR" 

Frank Longbottom laughed. "Outright nutty, I say. Who'd ever heard of a Communist-Death-Eater? What next? Voldemort's really a bloody Catholic priest?" Longbottom's feeble crack warranted a few equally weak laughs. 

"Thank you, Frank," Moody cut him off, turning his eyes back to the rest of the table. "As some of you may already know, Minister Potter had decided to act on his... theory." Moody's voice was heavy with sarcasm. 

"Theory? Fantasy is more like it," Frank muttered under his breath to his wife. 

Moody pretended not to hear, although he privately agreed with Frank's sentiment. "The Minister had sent two Aurors, two of our very own, to the Soviet Union... without notifying me," Moody said simply, inwardly fuming that an oblivious prick like Harold L. Potter had gone straight over his head.

"Can he do that?" Charlie interjected. 

"Evidently," Moody answered dryly. "And the two Aurors in question are none other than Sirius Black and James Potter." 

A noise escaped Severus Snape that could only be interpreted as a derisive snicker. 

"Do you have something to add, Snape?" Moody snapped. 

"No sir," Snape answered, though his face was lit with a poorly concealed smirk. 

"To make matters even more complicated," Moody continued, massaging his temples with his right hand. "I just received an owl from Miriken. He says Lucius Malfoy is in Moscow." 

Charlie whistled and Fletcher muttered an expletive Moody chose to ignore. 

Lottie gave words to Moody's worst fears. "If Voldemort gets his hands on the Minister's son--" 

"Then we're all screwed," Moody finished. "You might as well kiss this good-bye," he snapped bitterly, gesturing around at the Auror's offices. "Tomorrow it may be Voldemort's headquarters all because that brat wasn't content with his desk job. He had to go under my nose and whine to Daddy. And Black--" 

"Egged him on, no doubt," said Snape, looking like a child on Christmas morning. 

Dumbledore spoke up for the first time. "I remember then at Hogwarts, Alastor. They were as inseparable as brothers," he paused, considering. "I wouldn't be so hard on them. They're young." 

"This is a war, goddammit!" Moody yelled, slamming his fist onto the table. "We can't afford for them to play around. Russia is not a priority right now. We have enough trouble right here on the home front!" 

"Potter and Black are undoubtedly off on a little ego trip," Snape, of course. "They've been crossing lines ever since they were children. They undoubtedly have some foolhardy notion of capturing You-Know-Who themselves. They have no concern for the overall safety of the Ministry, but then again, Potter and Black were never two to think for anyone but themselves--" 

"Severus," Dumbledore cut his former pupil off gently, and Moody was amazed to see an almost sad look on his heavily lined face. "I'd like to remind you all that James and Sirius are acting under the orders of the Minister and are probably not responsible themselves." 

Snape looked as if he could have strangled something. 

"Regardless," Moody scowled. "The Minister is an adult. He should know better than to send his son halfway across the world away from all of our careful protection." 

"Since when had the Minister known better, Alastor?" Dumbledore said gently, a faint smile on his face. Moody grimaced as he thought of the bumbling, oblivious stumbling block that was Harold L. Potter. Potter was a pompous, arrogant fool, there was no denying it, and he often got in the way of Moody's meticulously laid plans. For the (supposed) head of the forces against Voldemort, Potter was far more trouble than he was worth. 

"Right now," Moody began. "Miriken is the only contact the Auror Bureau has in Moscow, and though his loyalty is dubious, at the moment he's the best we've got. Potter doesn't know about him. Since he sent the boys to Moscow without my sanction, they are without a guide, unless Potter has a contact I know nothing of, which is doubtful. This brings the situation from bad to worse, considering we have Potter and Black wandering around the Soviet Union without a guide, expecting to stumble over a Communist-Death-Eater conspiracy that doesn't exist!" By the end of this tirade, Moody's voice had reached a hopeless roar. He threw his face into his hands, accepting the inevitable defeat. 

"Knowing Black and Potter, they'll stumble over something," Snape smirked. He was the only one at the table who was smiling. "If I were you, I'd just wait for the Soviet prison camps to call." 

Moody ignored the younger Auror's suggestion. "Whatever happens, Lucius Malfoy must not know that James Potter is in Moscow, unsupervised and unprotected. I cringe to think of what will occur if he find out." 

"Lucius Malfoy," Arabella murmured, breaking the tension filled silence. She was stroking her pet kneazle absently, staring off into space. Moody wouldn't be surprised if the ancient Auror hadn't heard a single word of the last five minutes of conversation. "I remember his father... what was his name?" 

"Angelo," Moody supplied impatiently. 

"Ah yes," Arabella mused, snapping her fingers. "Angelo Malfoy." She frowned, biting her lip. "He was an Auror, wasn't he?" 

"One of the best," Moody nodded, though he still couldn't see what Figg was getting at. Unbidden, Moody's eyes lingered on the seat where Snape now sat. This time last year, that chair had been occupied by none other than Angelo Malfoy. The famed Auror had finally surrendered ten months ago, not to a Death Eater's curse or a Basilisk's glare, but from a bad cold that festered into pneumonia. By the time the mediwizards had reached a diagnosis, it had been too late. Moody shook his head, there was no use in lingering on the past. What happened had happened and all of his wishings couldn't bring Angelo back from the grave. 

"Whatever happened to Lucius? Why did he turn?" the old woman rambled. "The Malfoys have done so well for us in the past." 

"You know those Slytherins--" Charlie broke off, turning red when he saw Snape's glare. 

"If I remember correctly," Dumbledore mused. "Angelo himself was in Slytherin." 

"I was in Slytherin, Charlie," Moody said, raising an eyebrow in amusement when the young Auror went as red as his hair. "As for Lucius, I suppose the Dark Lord offered him treasures we can only dream of." 

Frank snickered. "As if the Malfoys need more treasures. They're as rich as Sultans as it is." 

"Lucius is a bad egg," Moody snapped, his lip curling into a snarl. "They have them in the best of families. He is no Angelo and he never was." 

Dumbledore shook his head slightly. "Lucius was never the same after the war, Alastor." 

"Vietnam wasn't easy on any of us," Moody growled, turning to Dumbledore. "Look here," he pointed to a particularly jagged scar on his left cheek. "I got that off of one of those damned American curse wizards." If there was one thing Moody had no patience with, it was Dumbeldore's ridiculous notion of redeemable evil. He half believed that Dumbledore would give Voldemort himself a second chance if he repented his sins on bended knee. Moody had learned long ago that such idealistic notions were just the naive dreams of fools. He had seen too many corpses, too much pain to give any stock in the innate goodness of man. A Death Eater was a Death Eater through and through, evil to the core. Each "second chance" was another opportunity for the scum to curse you when your back was turned. 

"But Lucius," Dumbledore said quietly, almost as pensive as Arabella. "He had a hard war, Alastor. A hard war."

----

"Narcissa!" The slender blonde brushed past her employer, a flush of anger and pain raising in her paper-white cheeks. Zvana reached out, her hand gripping the other's wrist, tightening around the slim circle of skin and bone. "Narcissa..." 

"Let go of me," the girl cried out, wrenching from the older woman's grasp. "You make me sick!"

"Narcissa, please try and understand--" 

"Why me?" she shook her head. "Why?" 

"It had to be you," Zvana whispered, drawing the other girl closer. "There's no other witches. He'll give you what you want." 

This quieted Narcissa, her pale blue eyes drifting over Zvana's shoulder. The owner got the feeling that Narcissa wasn't really speaking to her at all when she next opened her mouth. "So this my handsome prince, my hero on the white charger..." 

"I'm sorry," Zvana said quietly, letting go of Narcissa's wrist. 

The girl rubbed her arm, but she didn't turn away. "No you aren't," she said quietly. "You'd do it again." 

Zvana knew this was true, but she shook her head for the girl's sake. "You'll learn to love him, as he already loves you," the lie came easily to her tongue. "You two will be happy together in England, in a huge house with thousands of servants. You will have a new gown for every hour of the day, spoils from all corners of the world--" 

Narcissa shook her head. "You make me want to believe in fairy tales again, Zvana," she said softly. "But fairy tales are just lies," her lip trembled, "and love the greatest lie of all." 

Zvana met the girl's terrified gaze head on, and she willed the child to believe her lie with every ounce of her being. It may just save her in the end. "I used to believe that too," Zvana said quietly, catching Narcissa's hand in her own and squeezing it tight. "I lost all faith in love, I though it was only a dream, created by poets to torture those of us foolish enough to believe in it. But then my love, the love that thought I had lost forever, came back to me," she hesitated, trying to weave her fiction with all the fluid grace of a Shakespearean sonnet. "Love is like catching the wind," Zvana smiled. "It's an impossible dream, but so painfully beautiful when it is realized." 

"I can't believe that," Narcissa said, extricating her hand from Zvana's. She turned her eyes slowly to the door of the Roulette. Her voice trembled. "I wish to God I could… but then I hear my cue."

"All the world's a stage, and the men and women merely players," Zvana quoted pensively, her eyes turning to the Roulette's secret entrance, and her mind brushing upon the world held behind that door. A world of hope and decay, of filth and frivolity. It was a world where nothing made sense, and where everything had its place. It was the world that had corrupted this young girl, the world that had stolen her husband, and the world that now threatened to engulf her: mind, body, and soul. 

Narcissa shook her head quietly. "Why do we always have to play such elaborate games?" 

"Why?" Zvana smiled bitterly. "So we don't know the lies from the truth." 

----

"Where's all my soul sisters? Let me hear y'all flow sisters... Hey sister, go sister, Soul sister, flow sister... Hey sister, go sister, Soul sister, go sister..." Sirius paused in the doorway of the Roulette, the opening stanza's of Patti LaBelle's 1973 hit serenading his less than glamorous entrance. 

Despite the fact that James had told Sirius that the Roulette was hidden in a basement, he had found it slightly disconcerting passing through the idyllic hardwood hallways of Miriken's home, hallways that would not look out of place in an upper crust British home, and then entering what seemed to be another world entirely. A world of neon lights and cheap whores, a world where everything had its price. The Roulette was a world of pure fantasy, spun by criminals who dared to dream in the stifling world of Soviet Moscow. It was the escape hatch where Muscovites fled the daily grind, and submitted to their wildest fantasies in a club where a magic carpet ride was waiting in the back corridor, a short trip away. 

The Roulette was the place where the comrades of Moscow came to forget the gun they were holding to their own heads, where they overlooked the dangerous gamble they played every time they entered the club, pulled the trigger. Soon enough all of the clubber's chambers would be empty save one, and on that day, Stalin would have his due. 

And they would all pay it. 

Even James. 

Even Sirius. 

The Roulette created dreams for the citizens of Moscow when they were dying in that bitter cold winter of 1979. In turn, the Roulette would shatter all dreaming for two boys from halfway across the world. 

But tonight, things were just warming up. It was barely nine and the old adage "the night is young yet," was hovering on every tongue. The club had yet to be filled to its full capacity, though there was still a healthy crowd ready to start pissing the night away. Three women were on the makeshift stage, including the tattooed broad who had been singing "_Auld Lang Sin"_ the night before. She didn't have much of a voice, she was screaming the words more than singing them, but that didn't matter to most of the Roulette customers, whose attention was focused mostly on her too-small bra, full to the bursting. "_Hello, hey Joe, You wanna give it a go? Oh, Gitchi gitchi ya ya da da..."_

Sirius had never considered himself conservative, but he found himself hard pressed to understand the wild whoops of the men watching, who were full of rabid enthusiasm. _"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"_ The men let loose one collective cry that could only be interpreted as an affirmative. 

Padfoot's disgust was not lost on James, who surveyed his friend with detached amusement. "You got laid last night, didn't you? Fucking hypocrite." 

If there was one thing about James that Sirius couldn't stand it was his upper-crust smugness. Prongs was always so above-it-all. Far above his Mudblood friend, who was the proud descendent of an illustrious line of Liverpool factory workers. 

"Boy drank all that magnolia wine, On her black satin sheets--" 

"You were the one who wanted to come back," Sirius snapped defensively, crossing his arms in front of himself. James raised an eyebrow, amused at his friend's preschool protest. Prongs's face was lit with a smug holier-than-thou grin, which only fueled Sirius's annoyance more. True, he did have a reputation as a bit of a lady-killer, but there was a very thick line between breaking hearts and outright exploitation. Truth be told, he wanted to leave the Roulette as soon as possible, not because of the strippers and defiantly not because of the booze, but he was afraid of running into Narcissa. Their meeting that morning had been tense if anything, and he didn't fancy finding her in a compromised position. For that matter, he didn't fancy finding her in any position, and risk reminding himself of the previous night "_Creole Lady Marmalade!"_

"Look," James said, nodding towards the bar. Ulyanov was standing behind the counter, watching the club with what could only be deemed amusement. There was a shot glass of a clear liquid in his hand, either water or vodka. Considering that this was Russia, Sirius was willing to bet the latter. Ulyanov hadn't seen either of them yet, and Padfoot was more than happy to keep it that way. 

"Going to the S.D.E., my ass," Sirius sneered, eager to have a diversion, anything to turn his mind from Narcissa. Every time he saw the slimy bastard, he liked him less and less. 

"I wonder what he's thinking," James said thoughtfully, his friend's indiscretions forgotten. Ulyanov had set his glass down on the bar, and was now saying something in lowered tones to Sasha, who had appeared out of nowhere, a plain manila envelope in his hand. 

"If we knew that," Sirius whistled. "We could go home." 

James remained silent for a moment before replying with unnatural insight. "You really hate it here… don't you?" 

Sirius shrugged and looked away, Narcissa's face coming unbidden to his mind, stark white and contorted with terror as she huddled behind her tiny, ragged excuse for a sheet. He had done that. He bit his lip. "Yes." He said softly, surveying the club with quiet desperation. "Yes, I hate it here." Sirius paused for a second as James's stared at his friend in shock. "I… want to go home, James." 

Prongs could scarcely believe his ears. Not only was Sirius acting slightly off kilter, he now seemed to be loosing his much-famed nerve. "We have a mission, Sirius," he said resentfully, crossing his arms. 

Sirius stared at Prongs with ill-disguised disgust. "Mission?" 

"I promised my father that we'd get to the bottom of whatever is going on in Moscow," James said insufferably, once again oblivious to his friend's angst. "I _promised_ him, Sirius, and I don't break my promises." 

Sirius's jaw dropped a little bit, at James's utter naivete, but he knew when he was trapped in a loosing battle. Biting back a vindictive reply, he resigned himself to his fate. "Alright James…" 

James shook his head, taking Sirius's agreement for granted. "Look at him," he said scornfully, turning his eyes to where Ulyanov lurked by the bar. By now, he seemed to agree with Sirius that Ulyanov was defiantly up to something without outright admitting that his friend had been right all along. Suddenly, a spark came into Prong's eye, "I'm going over there." 

"James..." Sirius began. 

"You stay here," James ordered. "I'll take care of it." 

"That's what I'm afraid of," Sirius said, not really joking at all.

James ignored him. "You'll only incite Ulyanov, since you don't seem to able to control yourself. I don't want to have to tear you off of him." 

"James--" but James had already gone, not even interested in Sirius's reply. He was lost in the un-navigable sea of smoke and sluts.

"_Voulez-vous coucher avec moi... Ooh--_" There was a sudden break in the music as if the tattooed _shavala_ and her two backups were waiting for something. A rapt, expectant silence hung over the club. In spite of his anger at James and his disgust at his surroundings, Sirius found himself waiting too, eyes passing over the suddenly silent girls in their leather and fishnet. Shaking his head, Sirius wrenched his eyes away from the stage. He had to find James before the insufferable sot got himself shot. Sirius tried futilely to press his way through the crowd towards his friend but it was impossible, all of the clubbers were moving in the opposite direction, towards the stage. Turning around, Sirius saw what was the source of all the commotion. 

The back door of the club had just slammed open, smacking against the opposite wall with a resounding bang. Silhouetted in the entrance, the friendly lights of Zvana's home encircling her like a solar eclipse, was Narcissa. "_You make me sick,"_ she spat. For the second time that night, Sirius's jaw dropped. The crowd went wild as all thoughts of the James vanished neatly from his mind. "_You make me sick_." 

She pushed her way through the crowd. Her shirt was ripped down the center so it flapped about her lacy black bra and exposed stomach like a cloak. She took several steps into the club, tossing a lighted cigarette from her lips and into the crowd. 

"_I want you and I'm hatin' it_--"

She strode through the club, taking off her ripped shirt all the while. The crowd parted like the Red Sea as she made her way up towards the stage. The lost little girl of this morning was gone completely, and in her place remained a woman so completely in charge that Sirius could hardly believe that it was the same person. 

__

"Got me lit like a candlestick-- Get too hot when you touch the tip--"

A couple of the men sitting near the stage lifted her up onto their table, groping liberal amounts of her ass at the same time. Tattooed -lady from the stage tossed her the antique microphone, which she caught one handed. 

__

"I'm feelin' it, I've gotta get a grip on this--"

Sweat glistened on her naked torso. Narcissa raised one hand, tracing the line of her exposed stomach, trailing between her breasts, up her throat, between her lips--

__

"And it's drivin' me crazy, Baby don't you quit--"

The men seated at the table she was standing on continued their catcalls, hands moving up the line of her fishnet tights until they reached the contours of her red skirt, the curve of her hips--

__

"Can't get enough of it, You got me--" 

Her eyes, which had been closed through all of the mayhem, finally opened. Opened and focused on him. He could have sworn he saw her falter.

__

"Goin' again--"

She motioned to several of the oafs at her table and they lifted her up off of the table and onto the floor of the club. She was instantly swarmed by a beehive of clubbers, who swallowed her whole. Sirius lost sight of her, but not of the sound of her ravaged voice: _"Baby, you got me goin' again--"_

He turned his back to walk the other direction, futilely trying to push his way through the frenzied club towards the door, towards freedom, towards escape. Escape from Ulyanov and his schemes, the Roulette and its dreams, and the memory… the memory of what he had done to her--

A hand caught his arm. He didn't even have to turn around to know that it was her. "_You make me sick."_

But then someone had bumped into them, pushed them together and his hands were around her neck and this time it wasn't her doing the talking as she pressed her lips to his and all reluctance seemed shallow and unnecessary. 

__

I want you and I'm hating it

From somewhere very very far away the tattooed woman had picked up her song again, heavy techno beats backing her up, pulsing in a frenzied rhythm. 

__

"Touch of her skin feeling silky smooth," she fumbled at the buttons of his denim jacket, the snow still lingering about its collar freezing her hands. But ice alone couldn't numb the intensity they felt as for the first time that night, his lips met hers, joined heat rising into a crescendo. "_All right! Made the savage beast inside roar until he cried, More-" _

"More," she whispered, breaking the desperate kiss. 

__

"More, More!" The singer's voice hit a note it couldn't possibly sustain, and she cracked, coughing as the song continued to blare. 

__

"Now he's back home, Doing nine to five," One of the backup singers took over. 

"That's you," she giggled, her forehead resting against his. 

He smiled, the entire world narrowing to her. "I don't wear gray flannel." 

__

"Sleeping the gray flannel life-- But when he turns off to sleep, old memories keep--" 

"And I'm just a memory..." her pensiveness from the previous night reared its head as her eyes wandered over his shoulder, to where moonlight was drifting in through the open window, pooling on the floor. 

He laughed. "Pleasantly forgettable." 

Abruptly, she pushed him away. Stumbling he knocked into a couple grinding a few paces away. They gave him a few good _gov'nky_ to chew on before he turned away to find Narcissa. She was gone. This entire night was becoming more and more surreal, he felt as if he was trapped inside a Salvador Dali painting, time hanging sideways as sanity fled. _"More, more, more!"_

A flash of silver caught his eye. She was running through the club towards what he could only suppose was the exit. 

"Narcissa!"

"Gitchi gitchi ya ya da da-- Gitchi gitchi ya ya hee-- Mocca chocolata ya ya!"

"Narcissa!" He knew she heard him, but she didn't turn around. 

"Creole Lady Marmalade!" 

"Narcissa..." he was out of breath, having run from the center of the club to the absolute fringes in mere seconds. Her hand was on the door knob, ready to open it, to shut him out forever, then she turned around...

__

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir!" she turned around, singing in time with the tattooed wench and her cronies on the stage. But, it wasn't an indecent proposal of any sort. It was a death cry, a wounded sob as she advanced upon him, dead eyes blazing with the life of fury. She launched herself at him, he caught her fist as she lunged for his jaw. "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi! Isn't that what you wanted? All you wanted!" He didn't reply as she dug her nails deeper into his wrist. "Fuck me you bastard! It's what you came here for?" She screamed as he dragged her towards the door. "_Voulez-vous... voulez-vous_..." like the tattooed woman, her voice broke and her fury spluttered like a doused flame. 

He opened the door and pushed her out, keeping a firm grip on her wrist all the while. "What are you doing?" she said, trying futilely to shake from his grip. 

"Taking you upstairs," he said, avoiding her burning gaze. 

"Oooh!" She laughed viciously. "So you want some _voulez-vous _after all? You almost had me believing that you were different, that..." she trailed off as he picked her up and began to walk up the stairs. "Stop it! Put me down! I have to go back... back..." 

"You're going to bed," he repeated, feeling like he was reprimanding a five year old. "You're drunk." 

"Of course I'm drunk!" She snorted, still clawing halfheartedly at his shoulders, trying to twist away. The idyllic smile faded from her face as she began to speak again. She lost all awareness that Sirius was even there. "How could I not be drunk after him?" 

"Who?" Sirius said, afraid for a moment that she was talking about him. 

"Mr. Malfoy," she replied, drawing the name out accenting each syllable. "Whoops!" She laughed wildly as he almost dropped her. "I think you're going to break my neck!"

"Not if I can help it," he said between clenched teeth as he hoisted her over his shoulder. 

"How rape and pillage of you," she said in a sing-song voice. 

They had reached the top of the stairs and he dropped her, steadying her with his hands as she looked about to keel over without any of his help. "I'm not going to rape you," he said firmly. 

"Why?" 

"Why would I want to?" 

She broke away from his protective hand, saying a bit and then steadying herself on the banister. "Because I'm a whore." 

He reached out a hand to brush her cheek, but then dropped it to his side when she flinched away. "No you're not." 

Bitterly, she laughed. "Stop mocking me." 

"No." 

She didn't resist as he leaned forward into the kiss. Almost instantly she felt like a piece of a puzzle finding its mate, corner to corner, opposites together in perfect harmony, the resonance between them a spherical rhapsody. 

Heat expanded in her chest, melting through the icy layers of fear and doubt coating her heart. She could hear his own heart beat against her and that tryst, that trust was enough. 

Or maybe, she thought to herself, it just felt right because men were the only thing she knew how to do. 

----

"Did I ever tell you the story about the vodka and the Muslims, Dmitri?" Sasha said, not looking in the least bit surprised to see James as he sidled up beside the bar, trying his best to look furtive. Ulyanov was nowhere to be seen. 

"Er..." James was a little disappointed by Sasha's amiability. After Sirius's bizarre behavior, he felt the strong need to hit something very, very hard, and was secretly hoping Sasha would prove himself an easy target. James experienced violent feelings of any sort very infrequently, and this rarity only increased the power of his anger, which was now languishing like a popped balloon, deflated by the pinpoint of the bartender's friendliness. "No. I don't think you have..." 

Sasha rubbed his hands together eagerly, leaning over the bar. "The year was somewhere back in the middle ages, I forget what exactly, and the Muslim horde rides up in front of the gates of Moscow with their usual amicable convert or die message," Sasha laughed at his own dull wit. "So the Grand Duke of Moscow suddenly thinks that kneeling down and praising Allah wouldn't be that bad of an idea until the Muslim chieftains start reading the laws of Islam. He agreed with quite a few of them and," Sasha's mischievous grin grew wider, "was particularly tickled by the ones involving a harem," James grinned, thinking of how much he wouldn't want to be the Muslim leader when Lily heard the word "harem". She'd go nothing short of berserk. "Then, the Muslim chieftain got to the law stating that alcohol was the lifeblood of Satan and it's a mortal sin to consume it." Sasha took a swig out his bottle of vodka for good measure. "That was the end of the peace talks then and there, Dmitri. The Grand Duke threw the Muslims out and Moscow was sacked and burned, but the Russians wouldn't convert if they had to give up their vodka. Now that," he said, filling up a shot glass for James and pushing it across the bar, "is something to drink to, eh Dmitri?" 

James took the shot glass from the bar eagerly. "To the Muslims?" Sasha grinned, hoisting his own measure of vodka. 

"To the Muslims," James agreed, in quite a good humor now. Sasha nodded at him and downed his drink. James was about to do the same, and then when the glass was at his lips, he paused. Sirius's voice was suddenly in his ear, whispering, whispering words that changed everything: _Someone drugged us last night... when was the last time you passed out after one shot of vodka, James?_

Suddenly Sasha's smile seemed not amiable but sinister, swerving across his face like a snake waiting to choke the life out of him. The wild strobe lights of the club were closing in around his tiny stool, focused on only him like a prisoner awaiting interrogating. A narrow band of sweat dripped down his face, splattering onto the bar.

"What's the matter?" Sasha hissed, eyeing James like a prize quarry. "It's only one shot of vodka, James."

For the first time that night-- for the first time in his life, James felt the eyes on the back of his neck. Eyes that had been following him ever since he had first set foot in the club, in Russia, eyes that he had made himself blithely ignore. And now, when he finally saw, it was too late. The shot glass slipped through James's fingers, shattering on the counter of the Roulette bar and splattering James with the drugged vodka. He watched at the potion burned a hole in the counter, hissing gently and letting off a thin column of smoke. Instinctively, he swallowed hard. "Don't press him, Sasha," Ulyanov emerged from the shadows behind James, completing the trap. "The boy is finally learning." 

Sasha immediately straightened up as much as his ruined body would allow. It was as if he was addressing a general, a war hero. "What can I get for you, Doctor?" 

"Nothing," Ulyanov said smoothly, his tiny calculating eyes focused on James and James alone. "Nothing except your guest here because..." he paused, inhaling slowly, "...because our little charades have gone on long enough. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. _Potter_?" 

----

__

NEXT UP: Lucius does the tango, we learn more about (the infamous?) Dr. Miriken, and things begin to fall apart…

A/N-- first apologizes. I'm sorry this chapter took me so long to get out, school started August 27th, and that kept me bogged down, plus I've been cast in a play (And then they Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank_, if any of you are familiar with it), which has been eating up the remaining bits of my time. We open in four weeks ::tears out hair:: which is an IMPOSSIBLE TASK, so to be completely frank (godawful pun intended) RR III won't be out until after then at the very least. I'm sorry, once again, real life interferes with the world of fanfic :O) _

Onto happier waters: thanks to Rb (thanks so much, your review meant a whole heck of a lot to me), Jocetta (Can I quote you on that :O)?), starshine (I may take you up on your Russian offer if you don't mind overmuch :O) ), Viktor'sGurl (Ahh! Your review really made my day… and once again heads up to one of the (few) Viktor Krum fans out there), rave (great to see you again! Now if only we could see some TLL4 ::hint hint :O):: ), aragog (as always, my favorite reviewer), NS (Thanks! To tell you the truth, Lucius as a bullfighter was inspired by an SUV commercial, but c'est la vie… :O) ), kali ma (if I ever finish chapter three ::pulls out hair::, but thanks so much), Al (I'll try and cover up a blatant Flint… maybe Sirius wasn't too familiar with the exchange rates :O), but thanks so much for the con crit and your reviews), Rowena Alana (I missed you in VB, and hope to god you didn't get eaten by a shark. We really don't have them around normally… :O) ), Juliana (I'd say I'd to agree on the Russian Roulette idea :O) ), Kneazle (Lucius as the Duke ala Moulin Rouge! ::tries to imagine Lucius singing Like a Virgin _and fails miserably :O) ), CLS (another Baz fan! Once again, thank you so much for everything you've done for this fic, I am eternally in debt :O) ), Belphegor (thanks so much for the con crit and the French help, I take Espanol myself), and Trepadito (I love Vonnegut! My ex actually got me hooked on him, which is the best thing I can say about him :O) (the ex, not Kurt), I loved your review for The Joust, btw… pink Adidas sneakers? vbg) _

Please r/r and con crit is (as always) appreciated…

Love you all, Soz.


	4. (You Can't Fool) The Children of the Rev...

****

Title: Russian Roulette Chapter 3_—(You Can't Fool) The Children of the Revolution_

****

Author Name: Soz

****

Author Email: actriz_k@yahoo.com

****

Category: Romance/Angst

****

Keywords: Lucius, Sirius, Narcissa, James, MWPP

****

Spoilers: all the books

****

Rating: R

****

Summary: Sirius/Narcissa/Lucius triangle stretching from the illegal disco dance clubs of Communist-controlled Moscow to the Soviet prison camps of Western Siberia. Find what made and broke Sirius Black before he set foot in Azkaban.

****

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The names Vladimir Ulyanov and Josef Dzhugashvilli are also not mine, respectively they are the birth names of Lenin and Stalin. As much as I would love to, I do not own William Shakespeare's _Macbeth_, and I make no claims upon the songs _Sick and Beautiful_ (Artificial Joy Club) and _The Children of the Revolution _(Bono Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer). Malfoy Manor and its residents are somewhat inspired by _Wuthering Heights_ (Emily Bronte) and Gimmerton is a direct reference to the novel. The Sirius/Ulyanov scene owes a great deal to the 60s television show _Secret Agent Man_ (_Danger Man_ in Britain), and the line "I'm nobody's fool," is filched directly from an episode. I highly recommend all of the above music/books/TV show, in my book they are all top-notch stuff. The story about how Lenin got is name is one I have heard through the pipeline, though I don't have any written verification. It's just a fable and I'm not saying that it's the set-in-stone truth, it merely fit my purposes :). The Russian Roulette is based upon a historical club (which was more a gambling den than an actual dance hall) which operated in 1970s Soviet Moscow by a woman named Elizabeth Miriken. Like the fictional Zvana, Miriken's husband was in a Gulag. So I apologize here for any slander to the Mirikens, and any harm I do to their illegal club. 

****

Author's Note: Dedicated to all those who picked up on the Vladimir Ulyanov reference, but most of all, this is dedicated to Hayley—who will be leaving us soon :(. I want to wish you the best of luck. Your (wonderful) fics aside, we will all miss you so much! Also, a special thanks to Kip (even though he will probably never read this) for introducing me to _Sick and Beautiful_, which heavily inspired this chapter. Shout out to all of my fellow authors over at HP_Atlantis, and as always, a gigantic thanks to Connie for her beta. More profuse expressions of gratitude at the end of the chapter.

****

RUSSIAN ROULETTE 3

(You Can't Fool) The Children of the Revolution

__

SON: And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?

LADY MACDUFF: Every one.

SON: Who must hang them?

LADY MACDUFF: Why, the honest men. 

SON: Then the liars and the swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang them up. 

__

--Macbeth (Act 4, Sc. 2, lns. 58-64)

Moscow, Russia

December 31, 1995

"Narcissa!" His frantic call echoed in her ears, but she continued to walk, stiletto heels clicking out a panicked drumbeat upon the lacquered hardwood floor of the Russian Roulette. 

"Narcissa!" When his voice sounded again, her walk quickened into an all out run. She had been fleeing from the memory of Sirius Black for fifteen years. Fifteen years that that all boiled down into one single instant as she slammed up against the hard wooden door that had once been the back exit to the Russian Roulette, bringing her flight to an abrupt end. She paused for a moment. Her collision with the door had knocked the wind out of her. She heaved a gasp, all thoughts of her pursuer temporarily erased. For one single instant she was a girl again, seventeen and hopelessly naïve, ready to offer her heart, her soul and everything in-between to any man who could get her out of Moscow. It was one of life's ironies that her savior had been Lucius Malfoy, and seemingly interested in the wellbeing of none of the above. 

"Narcissa!" Her hand tightened around the door, which Miriken had had in late December 1978 under the cover of darkness. Any activity in the sun's light was unnecessarily risky, for day was a time when too much could be seen by unwelcome eyes. Unwelcome eyes were often attached to unforgiving lips, which would gladly blab tales to the wrong pair of ears, jeopardizing the future of the Russian Roulette. Miriken thought it best to move under night's cloak and thus avoid the whole affair, eyes, lips and everything in-between. So they were forced to move under the cover of darkness, hemmed in like common criminals. 

But, Narcissa thought with a rare smirk, criminals were exactly what they had been. However, they had been criminals with the best intentions of self-preservation. Miriken had intended for the door to be an escape route for the Roulette's management in case the KGB "dropped in for tea". The irony brought a bittersweet smile to Narcissa's lips, for when the KGB had come to call, the door had proved no boon to most of those trapped inside, their hands painted red with the guilt of free-enterprise. 

It was no surprise to her that the Roulette had undergone a transformation from the skinny half-starved waif of a club to this posh establishment, dressed up and bejeweled like a rich whore. She wasn't even halfway sorry to see the old club gone. For all of Miriken's pretended camaraderie, the Russian Roulette had been nothing to her except a rusty prison. When her cell door had finally been broken open, when the two of them forced her to choose between uncertain freedom and gilded captivity, she had folded her cards and stepped behind the bars of her jeweled cage without so much as a backward glance. And yet, nearly sixteen years after she had been dealt her final hand, she was still haunted by the consequences of her decision. 

It haunted her in the way her son moved, every condescending sneer leading her to wonder what he could have become if she had thrown caution to the devil, instead of bearing the devil through her caution. 

It haunted her in Malfoy Manor, a sprawling estate in the middle of the Yorkshire moors. But when she was within its ancient walls she could feel 300 years of Malfoy ghosts watching her and whispering what she had known innately from the first moment she had stepped within the Manor's walls. She had no more business living in Lucius's estate, futilely trying to pretend that it was home, than Satan would in taking up residence between the Pearly Gates. Though she may bear its name, she was not welcome in Malfoy Manor. 

Her decision haunted her most in the way that fate enjoyed sticking a dagger in her gut and twisting, by bringing her face to face with him, in this place, on this night, in these circumstances. 

It was his fault. She was the victim and he knew it. He had known it then, sixteen years ago in the middle of Moscow's coldest recorded winter. Even now, more than a decade later, he still followed her blindly like a faithful hound, trying to make some sort of penance for that bitter winter of '79. But there are things beyond forgiveness, and some crimes have no absolution. 

He had never loved her. She found herself wondering if he had ever really loved anyone. Like her, he had ODed on that most elusive of emotions at an early age. It had rendered her dead to love and loving, but she could only guess if it had the same effect upon Sirius Black. 

Capable of love or not, he had never truly cared for her. Though neither of them had realized it at the time, their relationship had been all about possession. From the first, they were a study in ownership. She had been another motorbike to him, and for a short while he had been her one catharsis. But even the sweetest medicines can turn to bitter gall. 

It had been sixteen years. 

Sixteen years of moving on to things greater and better, sixteen years of trying to pick up the shattered pieces of her life, sixteen years of trying to forget the early days of 1980 and the empty promises that they had held. 

"Narcissa!" Why wouldn't he let her be, leave her trapped inside the confines of her gilded cell? It was what she had chosen. It was her own fate, her own fault. Her hand tightened about the doorknob, her nervous sweat glistening upon the burnished metal. 

"Narcissa!" She was the victim and he knew it. He knew it with every sorry step he took, knew it in every terrible moment he stood, and knew it with every single-blood-pounding-heart-wrenching-world-stopping-ly guilty breath he drew. She turned the knob. 

"Narcissa!" She could feel his presence behind her; hot breath sliding up her cheek as it had sixteen years ago. For one instant, they stood frozen, and the only sound she could hear was the steady drip of time, trickling through the eye of a needle. She jerked her head away, unable to stand the nearness of him. Forcing the door open, she stepped out into the frigid Moscow winter. 

"Narcissa!" He was panting from the exertion of chasing her. He leaned against the open doorjamb of the Russian Roulette; the gentle light from dripping out from the inside of the club silhouetted his form like a moon in full eclipse, dark at the center, but bleeding away into brightness along the edges. 

She turned towards him, exhaling slightly. Their breath hung ghostly white in the air between them, as transient and insubstantial as a lover's dream. 

"Hallo, Sirius," she whispered softly. 

----

Moscow, USSR

January 1, 1980 

"I don't believe you," James said flatly, unaware that his mouth was hanging slightly ajar. "How can you even expect me to believe a word of what you're saying--" he broke off spluttering, his boyish face red with indignation. "The Ministry would never engage in what you're suggesting. Never." 

"Pity," Ulyanov remarked, fingers tracing the lip of his shot glass.

James felt a wave of fear slide up the back of his throat, tasting of bile and lemonade. "I'm going to contact the proper authorities. I'm going to tell my father about your lies, I--"

"Can't allow you to do that," Ulyanov finished James's sentence for him. With a flick of his wrist, he motioned to Sasha, who limped to the edge of the bar, leaning forward and adding his body to the threads of the psychological noose tightening around James's throat. "Now, Mr. Potter," he hissed dangerously, "we can do this the easy way or the hard. It's entirely," his smile flashed dangerously, "your choice." 

James's ears burned red with feckless anger, making his head spin. When he finally was able to speak, his words were not borne of subversive cleverness, like Ulyanov's, or cynical irreverence, which would undoubtedly be the tone of Sirius's theoretical response, were he is James's current fix. Prongs's reply was full of nothing but naïve, idiotic courage. "Are you trying to proposition me? You're wasting your bloody breath!"

"Shhh," Ulyanov cut him off with one swift hiss of air. "So be it." Without another word, he took James's head between his hands and slammed it down upon the bar. 

Through the veil of pain, James heard a voice from far above him whisper one single word, and though the speaker's tones were somewhat muddled and fuzzy, as if they were a bad radio transmission, the spell was unmistakable. 

"_Oblivate_."

He had time to feel mildly surprised before his entire world was shrouded in the impenetrable darkness of the unconscious mind. 

James's glasses spun away from his inanimate body, skittering across the black countertop to lie several feet away, one lens cracked straight down the middle. 

"Leave him," Ulyanov snapped as Sasha bent down, attempting to pull the boy up into something resembling a sitting position, "he will wake up in the morning, not much worse for the wear." Sasha let go of James, but his blind acquiescence didn't extend to his old eyes, shot with the cold light of concern. Ulyanov got to his feet, his hand feeling through the pocket of James's coat. He was obviously searching for something, his face constricting into an intent mask as he felt the boy up and down and—

"Ah!" Ulyanov pulled his hand out of James's breast pocket, a small burgundy leather booklet in his hand. With a deft moment he flipped the book open, a small smile growing over his ravaged features as he glanced at its contents. 

"What is it, Doctor?" Sasha asked, bending across the bar to try and catch a glance at the booklet. 

"The boy's visa," Ulyanov said as he ripped out one of the back pages of the passport. Pulling a pen out of his overcoat he scrawled something upon the blank sheet, and then pushed both the visa and his note across the bar to Sasha. 

"Six hundred thousand galleons for his return?" Sasha asked, picking up Ulyanov's note and reading it aloud, his white brows crinkling into a mask of confusion. 

Ulyanov bent down low over the bar, and only his eyes flickered upwards to meet Sasha's questioning gaze. "Find an owl, put these in an envelope and address it to Alastor Moody, Department of Aurors, London." 

----

Moscow, USSR

January 2, 1980

A change had come over her. 

Instead of being consumed by a sort of all-encroaching desperation, so vacuous and yawning that it threatened to engulf her entire form, corporal and spiritual, swallow her hole and then spit her out with a satisfied _"Ptooey!"_ she felt merely-- strangely-- content. 

Content. It was such a little word for such a big feeling. For the first time in days, months, years, she was not on the brink of tears, or at the beck and call of a devious inner demon. In all truth, she felt nothing except a kind of fuzzy warmth in the pit of her stomach. There was a half-grin curving across her lips like a waxing crescent moon, luminous in its lukewarm luster.

It wasn't anything really. No big revelation, no groundbreaking epiphany, unless you counted the absence of mind-paralyzing despair as a major coup. She did, as she couldn't remember a time when she had not been trapped under the thumb of chronic sorrow. 

It felt strangely liberating, but the possibility of a new and entirely different kind of imprisonment flickered across her mind as her gaze drifted downwards towards the stranger lying at her side. His hand was splayed across her stomach, fingers spread-eagled like a starfish's legs, utterly disposable, part of the endless cycle of callers, customers, lovers….

Or was this particular hand so easily dispensable?

And was this particular man a stranger at all? 

There was no circumventing the facts. She'd have to attribute this sudden contentedness to the man lying at her side. She looked at him, longish black hair falling down over his eyes, which were now closed; each guarded by its own fringe of dark lashes. He slept with his mouth open, breathing unevenly as a small trail of drool passed from his lips and onto the dirty wool of her black-market blanket. 

He drooled. Like a dog. 

And what alarmed her the most is that she found that mildly endearing. Had she thrown off one jailer, despair, for another, coming in the form of her liberator. If there was one thing she had learned from Miriken it was that appearances were always deceiving. And she didn't know if she'd be able to bear another captivity, even if it came in the sweet guise of her savior. 

But she soon dismissed this thought, for her fantasy was so powerful that it overrode all of her innate caution. The sweetest dreams always come to the most desperate. 

She took a shallow breath, her chest tight to the point of immobility with a sudden irrational fear. This could not be _love_, everything she had heard about the most famed emotion was that it had always been a huge sweeping sanguine feeling, transcending all boundaries and overleaping any barricades. Her only symptoms were a warm sensation in the pit of her stomach and a contented half-grin on her lips. No, she decided, placating herself, it wasn't love. But it was a smile. 

And that is a start. 

When he awoke, several minutes later by the faint rustle of an owl's wings, her eyes were turned to the window, blue irises reflecting the haphazard message scrawled in the heavens by a careless God, splatter-painted stars visible in her gaze. 

Shaking his head free of the last vestiges of sleep, Sirius caught the owl by the tail feathers, and relieved it of its roll of parchment. The paper was obviously cheap, so thin that it felt almost like newsprint as opposed to real vellum. Sirius turned the unmarked letter over in his hands, noticing how the thin parchment crinkled under his touch. Although the seal on the letter was intact the paper itself was decimated, wet, muddy and coming apart at the edges. The paper could have only come from one place. 

In the middle of the decade, after Voldemort's attacks on Britain intensified, the Ministry felt it necessary to redistribute funds in order to effectively battle the growing Death Eater threat. Though it meant that the wizarding world was significantly better protected, it also meant that it was worse equipped and although "high-priority" Ministry operations like the Department of Aurors had the financial backing to humor even their most outrageous whims, government programs that were not deemed vital to the war effort had to make do with second, or more realistically third or fourth, rate goods—hence the cheap parchment. Remus's beloved Merlin Archives has been especially hard hit by the Ministry cuts, and there were rumors that Harold L. planned to scrap the project entirely, which Sirius thought was a mistake. But on the other hand, that was nothing new, as Sirius considered most of Harold L.'s actions foolhardy. His curiosity awakened, Sirius leapt out of his reverie and into the present, leaning forward to slit the seal open with his thumb—

He was interrupted by a sharp nip on the nose. The mail owl, which had been flying nervously about Narcissa's tiny room since he had delivered his package, was more than ready to get moving. Without so much as an impatient squawk goodbye, the creature zipped out of the open window like a bat outta hell.

"Hey!" Dropping his letter on the floor next to his denim jacket, Sirius leapt off of the dilapidated mattress that served Narcissa as a bed and bounded over to the open window, shaking his fist at the delinquent post owl. "Come back here! What if I want to write back?" The owl pointedly ignored him, and Sirius could only watch hopelessly as it winged its way across the somber January sky. The tiny bird became smaller and smaller until it was only a pinprick on the western horizon, soon swallowed whole by the storm clouds gathering in the farthest reaches of the winter sky. 

"Let it go," the quiet consolation was Narcissa's, drawing him back to the mattress by the sound of her smoky voice alone. "It just knows it's not welcome here." 

"What are you talking about?" Sirius sat down beside her, intense gaze still focused upon the open window even though there was nothing to see except the gray contours of the city and the empty sky beyond. 

"Owl correspondence is severely restricted," she said, dropping the unopened letter back into his lap. "It's frowned upon by the SDE, because the Muggles wouldn't have access to it. They see it as an inequality." 

Sirius didn't even bother to reply, eyes still scanning for any sign of the post owl. The bird had not only brought him a letter, but memories of England, home, normality… thing he had almost forgotten the existence of, for they seemed worlds away from the cold Soviet capital. Although he was loath to admit it, he wished he could follow the bird home. 

But James, always disgustingly noble and infuriatingly stalwart would have no copping out. Sirius could just hear his friend's disgusted, and no doubt patronizing, reply if he suggested returning to England. "Well if its too intense for you, Sirius, then leave by all means. I was brought up to keep my promises and stand by my beliefs, but it would be foolhardy for me to expect that of everyone." Never mind the fact that James would most likely be dead if it wasn't for him, or worse, blabbing the few state secrets that he knew to Ulyanov. Of course James would term this blatant breach of magical security "breaking the ice", negating its consequences in his own mind. Prongs would always remain as white as virgin snow in his sainted opinion, utterly unwilling to forgive anyone (example: Sirius) who was unable to live up to his ridiculous standards of morality. The only poetic justice Sirius could see in the entire situation was that not even James was able to attain the "noble soul" he expected everyone he met to possess. The same pigheaded arrogance that caused James to aspire to such high moral standards would always keep him from attaining them. 

As Remus had pointed out sometime just after Hogwarts graduation, James was the perfect specimen of a born and bred Englishman; fiendishly proud, idiotically stubborn, and completely confident that the sun shone out of his own arse. 

Not that Sirius didn't like James. Quite the contrary, the two had clicked ever since their first meeting on the Hogwarts express. He could read James like Kindergarten English and Prongs could easily do the same for him. It was just that he had always felt somewhat disconnected from James and the rest of his affluent family. Sirius was of the firm belief that there were two separate wizarding Englands. There was the "upper-crust" pureblood families that may have had at one time had hereditary titles and still unofficially retained all the perks of such positions, and then there was everybody else. 

Sirius was very much an "everybody else", while James and Peter, both from wealthy wizarding families with flowery genealogies longer than Albus Dumbledore's beard were the dictionary definition of upper class. James could trace his lineage back to the Nordic wizard Sven the Splendiferous circa 408 AD, which Sirius, whose only family was his father and his batty old great aunt (and there was nothing particularly exciting about her, a victim of tertiary syphilis, all she did was sit in the corner and hum nonsense) found absolutely ridiculous. There was nothing special about a load of dead people, regardless of how many epithets they had attached to their names. 

Remus, being Welsh, didn't count. 

Sirius's "two England" theory had been developed and adopted on account of James's father, Harold L. Potter. Since the moment they had first met when James brought Sirius home to the Potter's Devonshire estate the Christmas of their second year at Hogwarts, Harold L. Potter had always made it quite clear that he detested Sirius, and Sirius was far from subtle when it came to expressing that the feelings were quite mutual. All of James's worst qualities stemmed directly from his father. If James was of the opinion that the sun shone out of his arse then Harold L. was utterly convinced that he had an entire galaxy up there. Sirius was inclined to agree to this postulate in one respect, though he was dead certain that it was not the Milky Way that Harold L. was carrying around in his backside. 

Sirius, who had cut his teeth on the gutters of Liverpool, was often the brunt of Potter's bigotry. For his part, Harold L. insisted that "dirty Black boy" was corrupting his precious son, which to be completely honest, wasn't that far from the truth. In defense, Sirius would say that James enjoyed being corrupted, which wasn't that far from the truth either, despite the fact that Prongs would never admit to gaining any amusement from his Sirius-induced descent down the primrose path. 

Shaking his head to clear it of the memories, Sirius turned his head to his letter. Careful not to rip the cheap parchment he reached under the lip of the letter, breaking the wax seal with his thumb. He didn't have to look twice at the spidery cursive writing before he knew its author. 

__

Sirius--

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Peter sends his regards and XXXXXXXXXXXXXX didn't have much trouble with the classified material. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Thanks, pal. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. 

Sirius broke off reading, staring at Remus's letter in amazement. Every few words were blotted out by a thick black line, chopping the note into tiny fragments of information and breaking the letter's cohesive whole. 

"It's been censored," Narcissa said quietly, her blonde curls dusting skin as she looked at the letter over his shoulder. "All owls coming into the country are intercepted by the SDE and edited… appropriately." 

"Edited appropriately," Sirius echoed dully, staring at Remus's ruined letter, a hollow forming in the base of his breast. The SDE had remained invisible for a good deal of his stay here, but now their presence hovered over him like a suffocating lethifold, forever watching, always waiting until just the right moment to smother its prey. If the SDE's hand could reach so far as to intercept his personal communications, what else did they know about him?

What else had they already discovered? 

Not for the first time, Sirius wondered how much longer he would be able to last in Moscow, a lion's den masked as a city, only revealing its true form once the jaws of the trap had swung shut. Or had he just ignored the signs that he was in too deep, arrogance becoming his blinders, hubris convincing him that he could best the Soviet system. This letter showed him that he couldn't even slip through Russia's cracks undiscovered. 

As Sirius's eyes traveled back to Remus's massacred letter his initial fear melted into molten anger. How dare they? The SDE had no right to spy and scrounge; blacking out his friend's speech like it was an arithmetic mistake. For the true mistake was not Remus's, but the SDE's. He'd make them regret this intrusion in the end, or he'd damn himself with Voldemort and all of his minions. Lip curling into a scowl, he continued to read what was left of the letter. 

__

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX there is a Vladimir Ulyanov in the Merlin Archives, the only (slight) complication is the fact that he died in 1924. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Vladimir Ulyanov is the birth name of Lenin. In case that doesn't ring a bell, or more aptly, because that doesn't ring a bell, Lenin was XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX simply wonderful.

XXXX, there are two possibilities. One, Vladimir Ulyanov is exactly who he says he is and you're dealing with the ghost of a late Soviet Dictator. I seriously doubt the likelihood of something like that occurring, even to you and James. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Two, this man is playing on your ignorance, which seems far more feasible to me, but then again, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. 

My suggestion: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX keep XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX your chin XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX up.

Best XXXXX, 

Remus

PS- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX, and of course Lily wants you to bear a message to James, I told her that XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. She says if he isn't home within the week, she's going to name the baby after his father. I'd urge him to do as she says; the world could do without another Harold Potter. 

There was no question in Sirius's mind that Lily would make good of her threat. A wild, wicked little sprite with a soul burning as bright as the red flame of her hair, Lily had James wrapped around her finger like the 14 karat wedding ring he had given her last March, emerald to match her eyes. Lily was the only one who could beat sense into James when he was in one of his (numerous) states of pigheaded immobility, and she didn't hesitate to use this talent, and thus make all of their lives a little bit easier. 

Beyond her fiery spirit, Lily had the sweetest eyes and the lightest laugh and when she was smiling it was like the whole world was grinning madly back at you. Sirius supposed he was half in love with her. They all were really, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and of course Prongs. He had once joked, though not without a trace of seriousness, that Lily hadn't so much married James as wedded herself to the Marauders. 

The thought of the Marauders caused Sirius to glance briefly back towards Remus's damaged note, smiling to himself. Despite the censorship, it was times like these when he was so intensely reminded how far away home really was and, he thought with a pang of embarrassment, how much he really missed it. By home, he didn't necessarily mean his bed and his bike and all of his familiar material things, but the camaraderie of the Marauders, and their close-knit circle. Sirius missed the security of being among people that cared about him. People that didn't have hidden agendas stuffed up their sleeve, people who were not playing their own secret games of life and death. 

His gaze lingered upon Narcissa, who was smiling contentedly upon his chest. She was so beautiful and yet, so incredibly alien to the world of friendship and security he was used to and had before now, taken for granted. 

Even before Hogwarts, in Liverpool, Sirius may not have had vast ancestral estates like James or meandering genealogies á la Peter, but he had had friends, which had become, whether they knew it or not, his safety net to fall back upon and the only real family he had possessed. Narcissa had none of that, and it killed him, for the loneliness and desperation she felt had always been a stone's throw away from his father's tiny home on Wright street, something always lurking like a Grim in the darkest alleyways of his mind. 

So he made his first New Year's resolution. He'd give her a tiny taste of his life, if only one little sliver of the safety and friendship Peter, Remus, and James provided unquestionably for him. She deserved it more than he ever had, if only for the single reason that to his knowledge, she had never experienced such unwavering love. He'd be her James, her Remus, her Peter-- It was the least that he could do. 

She looked at him, blue eyes crystal clear in the pale light of dawn. "Good letter?" 

"You can read it if you want," he said, offering it to her. "What's left of it at least," he added dryly. 

She looked away hurriedly. "It's none of my business. I shouldn't have--"

"Don't," he cut her off, sick of her timid shyness. She was like a scared rabbit. It made his sick to see a human being so conditioned by the system that they were afraid to speak their mind, frightened of their own thoughts. He took her hand firmly and placed the parchment in it, squeezing her wrist a little too tight for comfort. "Read it," he commanded slowly, as if he was speaking to a small child. "I _trust_ you." He felt good saying those words, not because he particularly meant them, but because he though that they were something she desperately needed to hear-- needed to believe. It was impossible, Sirius thought with a twinge of foreboding for the girl, to love anyone until you loved yourself. He should know. 

She squeezed the letter in her sweaty palm, frail fingers lingering upon the folded parchment. "Can I open it?"

"Yes," Sirius answered the question for her before the last breath of her previous word had left her mouth. He drew her close as she slowly unfolded Remus's letter, wrapping his arms around her waist. She was so thin that the bones of her tiny ribs pressed into his arms, feeling like the bars of a cage. Her pale blue eyes traveled down to the parchment. The spidery cursive script that covered it came into view and—

"I can't read English," she said flatly, a touch of regret in her voice. A lying thought crossed her mind, her fragile confidence unraveling inside of her like a badly sewn hemline. What if he was toying with her affections, with the intent to mock her horribly? 

He felt her freeze up under his touch, and not knowing the source of her sudden discomfort, he tried to soothe her tension with a gentle squeeze. "I'll read it to you." 

"I… don't care," she sniffled quietly. 

"Please," he said, "let me." It was more of a command than any kind of request, so she relented, allowing him to pry the letter from her clenched fingers. Drawing a breath, he began to read, tracing the words with his index finger as he went along so she could see what had been "edited appropriately" by the SDE. 

When he reached the part about Vladimir Ulyanov, she graced him with a slightly amused chuckle, and he was so amazed to hear any sound of enjoyment from her that he set down the letter, an incredulous expression on his face. "What?" he asked. 

"Of course he isn't Vladimir Ulyanov," she said flatly, a small grin still lingering upon her lips. "I don't know how he managed to get away with that alias for so long." 

"Alias?" Sirius blinked somewhat taken aback, but after letting the new information sink in for a few moments, he wasn't really surprised. Sirius had always known intuitively that there was more to "Vladimir Ulyanov" than initially met the eye. "What do you mean?" Sirius said cautiously, trying to keep his tone even. His instinct was screaming at him that he was on the edge of something very, very large. Probably Hagrid large, possibly Andre the Giant large, maybe even Snape's nose large, but of course, that was only if he was very lucky. He knew had to contain his excitement lest he frighten Narcissa into her usual silence. If only he could keep the tight-lipped girl talking…

"Of course Ulyanov is an alias. Vladimir Ulyanov is Lenin," she said matter-of-factly as Sirius leaned closer, baiting his breath. "It's would be like someone walking around England calling themselves King Arthur." 

Sirius remained silent for a moment, slowly beginning to realize that he now had solid proof that Ulyanov had screwed him over, and not just minimally. The bastard had pulled a fucking two-ton bag over his head. Sirius was not amused. "So if he's not Vladimir Ulyanov, who is he?" 

"I don't know," she said. Her reply came a little too quick to be entirely truthful. 

"Yes you do," he countered, pulling her tighter against him, afraid she may try to escape. 

She went rigid, whether from his sudden affection or their tense discussion, he wasn't sure. "It's none of your business," Narcissa whispered tersely, eyes darting about in a nervous manner. 

"What harm can it possibly do?" he said, stroking her hair gently, trying to diffuse her wild fear as quickly as possible. He didn't fancy getting thrown out in the cold again. And if she chucked him out, he'd have twice as many questions floating around his brain unanswered, gnawing at the ropes binding his conscious mind together. He didn't know how much longer he could take the constant stress of simply _surviving_ in Moscow without snapping for good. 

"Please, Sirius," she whispered, curling up against him. From where she was nestled against his chest, blonde hair streaming over her features, she didn't look much older than ten. "Not now. Not here." 

And he knew he could have wrestled it out of her; he was aware that her could have broken her, but he wasn't able to make himself do it. It wasn't fair to her, and for all of his disgust at James's over-zealous mortality, it just didn't seem right to him. He tried to reconcile his reluctance to himself by saying he would get it out of her later. But despite the nominal justification, Sirius knew that wouldn't wrestle it out of her by brute force, not now, not later. He just didn't have the heart to push her over the edge. So he simply ringed both of Narcissa's wrists with his own and whispered: "You said the magic word." 

She smiled a weak, relieved sort of smile, staring at his fingers as he let go of one wrist, hand gently traveling up the curve of her hip…

She loosed his grip upon her other wrist and moved his hand into her own, their fingers intertwining. Somehow, his lips found hers and they met, tentatively at first and then harder, faster, deeper as her lips parted against the intoxicating kiss, her mind swam, dizzy and drunk with the sweet elixir of lust. She reached around his waist, fingers traveling under the cheap fabric of his ratty T-shirt, his slick sweat greasing her palm as she traced the curve of his spine, heart beating faster, the act of breathing becoming a desperate task, the moment so beautiful that it ached--

The door burst open, bouncing off the far wall with a violent clang.

Sirius broke out of the kiss as Narcissa froze like a deer in the headlights, a look of abject shock on both of their faces. Ulyanov didn't even have the grace to even pretend to be embarrassed. "Here," he said gruffly, tossing a pile of pale-pink lace at Narcissa. "Put this on. Malfoy is waiting for you." 

Sirius's jaw hardened at the mention of Lucius. Shooting Ulyanov an acid stare he watched angrily as Narcissa slid out from under him, her manor that of an apologetic child. "Wait for me." Although it was actually a statement, the girl's phrase had the tenor of a nervous question as opposed to an actual command. 

Eyes blazing fury that he didn't have the wit to hide, Sirius turned to Narcissa and made a point of replying in the direction of Ulyanov, who was hovering over their bed with the satisfied air of a cat that has just had the cream. "Of course," he said and then, simply to piss the older man off, he reached for her, bringing his lips down hard upon hers, felt her respond, body arching as the kiss oozed through them like hot wax. Her heart hardly dared to beat as she melted slowly into him…

Ulyanov, always the romantic, cleared his throat. "Are you quite finished?"

Narcissa twisted away, blushing furiously with embarrassment. Sirius gave her hand a squeeze, more out of pity than any tender emotion. He would rather face 1000 Ulyanovs than spend one evening with Lucius Malfoy. Judging from the abject look of terror upon her own face, Narcissa seemed to share his sentiment. She shot Sirius one last warm smile through the frigid gulf of air as she scurried past Ulyanov and closed the door gently behind her. 

The silence that followed was, if anything, excruciatingly uncomfortable. 

Ulyanov finally broke the silence, his tiny tongue darting over the crocodile grin formed by his lips. "Mr. Black." 

Sirius wasn't remotely surprised that Ulyanov had learned his real name. In fact, he was more astonished that it had taken his "informant" so long to see through his shallow ploy. "Skip the pleasantries, Ulyanov," he sneered, reaching down to grab at his T-shirt, still lying in a crumpled green ball on Narcissa's floor where he had abandoned it the night before. "I have had enough of your bull to last me a lifetime." 

Ulyanov's smile did not extend to his eyes as he reached into the breast pocket of his overcoat. Instinctively, Sirius tensed, half-afraid that Ulyanov was about to pull out a gun a shoot him on the spot. He relaxed somewhat when the older man pulled out a grubby leather cigarette case, which he snapped open. "Smoke?" he asked, offering the case to Sirius. 

Sirius shook his head. "I don't smoke." 

Ulyanov continued to smile, showing all of his teeth as he slipped the case back into his overcoat. "Neither do I, but I find cigarettes useful for relaxing," he paused, searching for the right word, "acquaintances." 

"Sedating your prey," Sirius muttered as he pulled the grubby green shirt over his head. 

Ulyanov shook his old head slightly, fixed smile never wavering. "You have no tact, Mr. Black. You have the invaluable talent of saying exactly the wrong thing at precisely," his smile widened maliciously, "the wrong time."

"Is this going to be a discussion of my shortcomings, Ulyanov?" Sirius said tersely as he pulled on his jeans, standing up for the first time. 

"No, I'll touch on your merits," the other man said. "You're highly intelligent, extremely cynical and," he added pointedly, "you have very good instincts. For instance, you knew not to trust me from the moment you arrived. Or if you'd prefer a more immediate example, when I reached into my coat a few moments back you thought I was going to produce this," he said smoothly, withdrawing his hand from the pocket of his overcoat. Closed in his fingers was a pistol. 

Sirius's eyes flickered down to the gun and then back to Ulyanov. "Is it loaded?" 

"Of course." 

"You're not like your friend, Mr. Black. You're nobody's fool, and I daresay it would be against character for you to stay here when it is so painfully obvious that you are not wanted. I hope you know what you're doing Mr. Black, screwing with the powers that be." 

"I've been screwing with the powers that be all of my life," Sirius hissed, his hand unconsciously clenching into a fist. 

"As have I," Ulyanov said quietly. "Be prepared to pay dearly for it." 

"Is that a threat?" Sirius growled, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. 

"It's a warning," Ulyanov said flatly, his face an unreadable mask. "A warning you don't deserve," he snapped, falling back his old condescending sneer.

"Then why are you sparing the valuable time to warn me?" Sirius countered, his voice growing a little bit louder. 

Ulyanov's unnerving smile widened, and his low voice broke into a laugh. "I am wasting my time. You're not going to leave. You British are so stubborn; from a purely intellectual standpoint it's actually quite admirable, but I'm afraid your pigheadedness is not practical in the real world. This is not Hogwarts, Sirius Black." 

Sirius tensed, at the mention of his former school. His anonymity, his privacy, basic human rights, had been ripped away to leave him standing dead still with shock, staring into the sneering smile of the man determined to be his downfall. "You said it yourself," he replied, black eyes burning with the flame of sheer obstinacy, "I'm nobody's fool." 

The other man laughed at this. "Very good, Sirius, very good. But I'm afraid I can't keep you around to amuse me; you've already outlived your much debatable usefulness. If you don't leave soon," Ulyanov said smoothly, putting on the façade of being rather bored with his rigged game of cat and mouse, "I will ensure that you meet with a regrettable accident, that is," he smiled nastily, showing all of his teeth, "supposing that Lucius Malfoy doesn't get to you first."

Sirius couldn't help but laugh sardonically. The day Malfoy made him pay for anything would be the night he'd murder James, and Wormtail would betray them all before that happened. "You're very funny, Ulyanov." 

"Oh, I'm not joking." Ulyanov looked it; his face was completely serious, lips pressed together in a slight frown. "I don't joke. Not when I'm playing games with such high stakes." 

"What if I had a royal flush up my sleeve," Sirius upped the ante, refusing to fold. 

There was a glimmer of amusement in Ulyanov's intense gaze, but whether it was on account of the poker metaphors or sparked by his own dumb pigheadedness, Sirius couldn't tell. "I'd suggest," Ulyanov began, choosing his words carefully, "that you open your eyes and see who is really dealing you your hand, Mr. Black." The older man's tone was slick with oozing mockery. "The Riviera isn't the only place that is rigged." 

"Clever," Sirius sneered drolly.

Ulyanov raised an eyebrow. "Yes, things do get rather clever when the Joker is holding all of the cards. That's why most people take him out of the deck before they start to play."

"So why are you in the deck this time, Ulyanov?" 

"Because I'm the dealer." 

----

Lucius strode down the entry hall of Zvana Miriken's home, absentmindedly running his fingers over the dark wood paneling lining her walls. It really was a beautiful house, though its quaint charm didn't approach the gothic grandeur of Malfoy Manor back in Yorkshire or even the rustic splendor of his summer villa in Cordoba. But as homes go, Zvana's was tolerable, especially considering that ever since the Soviets had taken over, the Russian ideal of edificial beauty had been four steel poles and several hundred tons of concrete. 

But Miriken's home was pre-Revolutionary and thus spared this aesthetic suicide. The house was quaint enough, sporting a sprawling wrap-around porch and stone walls, all painted in lurid shade of cough-medicine purple. And though the paint was now watered and faded, Miriken's house still stuck out like a petrified birthday cake in the gray industrial wasteland of Moscow, radiating warmth, hope, and all sorts of various in sundry home-cooked values, in short, everything you would not expect to find inside the walls of an illegal whore house. Lucius scowled because that's exactly what Zvana's home was: a whorehouse. And he wished that his father were still alive to see him sink so low. 

His single hope was that his father could have hung onto his miserable life long enough to see the Dark Lord triumph. Lucius would have sold his soul in an instant to see the look on the old man's face on the day when Voldemort took over the seat now occupied by that idiot Potter, while Moody, Dumbledore and all of his father's old cronies watched helpless-- trampled underfoot. Ironically, the sight of such a day would have probably killed Angelo Malfoy. But there was no use in such childish fantasies, whatever fleeting satisfaction they gave him. The old man was long dead and as far as the hand of magic reached, it could not cross the River Styx, and break the barrier between who is and what was. 

Lucius no longer had any business in Moscow thanks to the ineptitude of Vladimir Ulyanov. The next time he ran across that unfortunate man, Lucius planned to make the imbecile weep for mercy, ruing the day that his bitch of a mother brought him squealing into the world. True, there was the always the Potter boy to occupy his time, and his master would be greatly pleased if he managed to procure damaging information on the son of the British Minster of Magic, but Lucius was feeling far to languid to formulate any diabolical schemes. Besides, the Potter boy was an idiot by nature and would waltz into danger without any prior prompting. Lucius could simply sit back and watch the show. He was bored with world domination, and beyond that-- with the world itself. Ever since he had first set foot in Moscow, he had had the constitution of a wet rag and memories that he had been trying to repress for the better part of a decade decided to rear heir ugly heads. Was it only just a decade ago he had graduated from Hogwarts? Ten years seemed like ten long centuries, in which he had aged countless lifetimes. 

Remembering Miriken's comment about wards he lit a cigarette with a slight wave of his hand. Truth be told, he honestly wanted to go back home-- to Spain. He hadn't been to England, home in the most legal sense of the word, since his father's funeral, ten months ago. He didn't miss it, because aside from the fact that Britain was rainy, gray, and miserable, Malfoy Manor, and the moors surrounding it brought him closer to the person he had been at his Hogwarts graduation, a short decade ago. He had left that person buried under thousands of feet of jungle mud. He couldn't tolerate the Manor, and the effect it had upon him. 

Moodily, he exhaled, letting out a thin trail of smoke. The Manor though willed to him by his father, was unofficially his sister's, who, although she much preferred the south of France, took residence within its walls five weeks for every one night he spent there. Her absence at the ancestral Yorkshire estate wasn't because she was haunted by memory but simply on account of the allure of the beaches and the cars and the Roulette tables of the Riviera. His sister was a professional socialite and made a career out of her idleness. Her fun and games weren't a complete waste however; she was a notoriously good gambler and doubled her slim cut of the family fortune annually. It was Lucius's pet theory that his sister wasn't so much a good gambler as a skilled cheater but he turned a blind eye to the "games" of his fellow Slytherin. How else did the world expect them to make use of their talents? 

And while his sister frittered her days away on the Riviera, Lucius had turned to the Malfoy's ancestral home in Spain. Malfoy was actually a bastardized French version of Malfé, literally translated from the original Castilian as "bad faith". The Malfé had been a powerful clan of wizards in what is now called Andalucia, a region of Southern Spain. Infamous for their dabbling in the Black Arts, the Malfé had held wizarding Andalucia in an iron grip without any interference from the local Muggles, Moor or Christian, until about the year 1400. Contrary to popular belief, the Spanish Inquisition targeted not only Jews and Protestants, but Witches and Wizards as well. Fearing for their lives, the Malfé had been forced to leave their vast holdings in the grip of the Inquisition and flee across the Pyrenees to France with no possessions except the clothes on their backs. 

Never admitting defeat, they managed to worm their way into the French court, which, unlike its neighbor to the South, had quite the taste for magic and necromancy. The Malfé, now Malfoy, whored themselves out to the French aristocracy, fashioning themselves seers and mystics in an effort to capitalize upon the noble's obsession with the occult. Before long, the displaced Spaniards had secured a niche in Parisian society, and they managed to weather three centuries of court intrigue with a smile upon their lips and a phony crystal ball in their hands. 

But the Malfoy's time in France did nothing for their historic legacy as Dark wizards. Immersed in the shallow materialism of the French court, the Malfoys ancient ties to the black arts grew weaker and weaker until they finally snapped entirely, leaving a watered-down family of second-rate wizards who cared more for frippery than magic. But in 1789, everything changed. Seventeen eighty-nine was the year of the dawning of the rights of man, the year of _liberté, fraternité_, and _égalité_ for all, and the year Dr. Guillotine's device for killing chickens began its long slow climb into infamy. Seventeen ninety-eight was the year of the French Revolution. 

Like many other aristocratic families, the Malfoys became _émigrés_, fleeing war-torn France for the relative safety of the British Isles. They finally settled in Yorkshire, and set to building the much-famed Malfoy Manor, which was completed in early 1801, exactly twelve years after their Diaspora from France. It was then that the _Émigrés_ immersed themselves completely in British wizarding society, just as their Spanish ancestors had done in France four hundred years earlier. 

It has only been in the last century that the Spanish Ministry of Magic, _la_ _Oficina Mágica de España_, formally apologized for the harm done to countless Witches and Wizards during the Inquisition. The _Oficina_ began to pay nominal reparations, which the Malfoys gladly added to their already brimming coffers, and returned the deed to the Malfé's ancestral estate in Andalucia. Despite these efforts at catharsis, Spain still suffered from the long-term effects of her Inquisition. To the present day, Spain had a significantly lower Wizard per Muggle ratio than most major world nations. 

Lucius's father had taken him to the Malfé Mansión as a small child. He had a bucketful of hazy sun-drenched childhood memories of his summers at the family estate. He remembered clambering up the villa's imposing grand staircase on his hands and knees, chasing his sister through the Mansión's endless olive groves, and watching the local Minotaur fights. Although he was entranced by the brilliant red of the Matador's cape, and the sheer physical power of the monster, whose muscles rippled like liquid fire under his coat of black fur, above all, it was the scent of kill that captured the small boy's imagination. 

He had spent days in the ring, gray eyes peeping over the whitewashed partition between the actual arena and the stands surrounding it. Sometimes the ring's occupants, man or beast, got so close that he could reach out a small hand and almost touch the fantasy. But more often than not, they had remained in the center of the arena, detached from his tiny reality. Still he remained, watching the fights day after day as the hot Spanish sun beating upon his back, eventually turning his pale skin a blistering red.

In those days, the Mansión had seemed like a playground to him, friendly and benevolent, like an ancient uncle ready to scoop him up onto his knee and whisper tales of the "good old days". But when Lucius had finally clambered up onto his Uncle's knee, and heard the stories of the Malfoys in days when they had held Andalucia within their iron grip, the countenance of the Mansión had transformed from a smiling relative to a bitter old man, urging him with every passing day to rekindle all of the former glory of the Malfé. His brief spell in Moody's army pushed him over the edge. Upon returning from deployment, he fled Yorkshire to Cordoba where the Mansión and its legends consumed him, until he was unable to distinguish his own will from that of his ancestors, the call of his blood stronger than that of reason. 

As a child he had been oblivious to the omnipresent aura of Dark magic that lurked about the Mansión like fog from a B-rated horror movie, always drifting a few meters above the ground, billowing about his ankles as it wove its spell around his heart, icy fingers tightening in a stranglehold about his spirit. He knew the old villa was slowly drawing him in, playing a cat and mouse game with his soul, laughing as Lucius embraced the legacy his father had turned his back upon. Lucius did not so much embrace his legacy as his legacy engulfed him with as much ferocity as the bitter bite of the brand, burned into the naked flesh of his arm. He blindly followed the call of the Malfé's magic, its ethereal tones reminiscent of a Mudblood's scream, echoing in the stratosphere of his subconscious. The Dark Arts were in his blood. He needed no other justification for his participation in black magic. And as much as his father would like to pretend otherwise, one's nature was predestined. 

Inescapable. 

But Moscow, with its bitter cold wind was a far cry from the olive groves of Southern Spain. And Lucius had wanted desperately to go home, home to his Mansión and his Minotaur ring, home to the place that called to him like England never would. But then, she had appeared. 

He took a long drag on his cigarette, considering _her_. She was beautiful. But she was also a terrible bore, always silent and sniveling and shuddering, but even that was better than the inane prattle so many people made a hobby of. If there was one thing he couldn't stand it was people. Most of them seemed perfectly adequate, and then they blew the entire gig by opening their mouths. Moodily, he let out a cloud of smoke. He wasn't in love with her-- God, no-- but she was a perfectly adequate ornament who would fit his purposes for the night. 

No one would ever know she was a whore. 

Taking a drag on his cigarette, he pushed open the door to Zvana's office—

--To find Mrs. Miriken jerking hastily across her desk, a telltale smear of lipstick on her chin. And turning from the scene of the crime to look at the intruder, his collar slightly askew, was Vladimir Ulyanov. The papers on Zvana's desk looked like someone had just been through them with a whirlwind charm. 

Lucius blinked mildly, appearing rather unfazed. "You do get around," he said scornfully to Ulyanov by way of greeting. Zvana turned a florid shade of red, and she refused to meet Lucius's gaze, suddenly very interested in the collar of her ruby suit jacket. 

Ulyanov, unlike Zvana, appeared completely unruffled. "At least I don't have to pay for my kicks, Malfoy," he replied icily, unable to suppress a self-satisfied smirk. 

Lucius was rather upset, not on account of Ulyanov's childish taunt, but because he had always supposed that Zvana had been a bit of a nun ever since her husband's death. When she had finally decided to cease her excessive mourning she had chosen a disgusting sot like Vladimir Ulyanov, old enough to be her father. If Lucius had been in Zvana's position he would have chosen someone more attractive, stronger, and for the love of Voldemort, younger. Lucius would have chosen someone more like himself…

"Narcissa is--" Zvana began rather hurriedly, wiping the lipstick from her chin. _Narcissa? Was that the girl's name?_ Lucius had forgotten. As he stared moodily at the mess on Zvana's desk he noticed her glance nervously at Ulyanov who shook his head ever so slightly in reply to her unspoken question. He half-wondered what they were planning. He didn't really care as long as they gave him the girl. 

"Waiting for you," Ulyanov finished Zvana's sentence, the slightest twist of mockery in his voice. He nodded disrespectfully at Lucius. "I'll her you've arrived." 

"Be quick about it," Lucius snapped, wanting to put the man back in his servile position. 

Ulyanov didn't even grace Lucius with a reply. He brushed past the younger man coldly, fixing his collar with one hand as he pushed the door open with the other. Malfoy listened to the pitter-pat sound of the other man's footfalls ascending the rickety wooden staircase leading to the floors above before glancing at the obviously embarrassed Zvana. Noting her red cheeks and her inability to meet his gaze he realized that he had lighted upon the perfect way to revenge himself upon Ulyanov. 

Lucius sat down across from Zvana sans invitation. Smiling, he took a long drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the woman's face. His grim widened when she began to cough. "I was under the impression that you were still in mourning for your husband," he said tactfully, watching her squirm. 

"You can only mourn for so long," Zvana said carefully after an uncomfortable pause. Her expression was strained and she was glancing about her tiny office like a caged rabbit. 

Lucius bared his teeth in a wolf's grin. "Before the memory fades." 

"What?" she was rather unnerved under his intense glare. 

"You can only mourn so long before the memory fades," he paused for the briefest moment, his amiable tone turning malicious. "I'm sure your husband would forgive you." 

Zvana managed to look rather affronted. "My husband is dead, Mr. Malfoy." 

Lucius's voice was icy innocence. "I used the past tense." 

But then the door slid open and Narcissa stepped into the room dressed in a low cut gown of pink lace with slit sleeves. Its drape was almost Roman in style, hanging over her shoulders in an entirely asymmetrical, yet aesthetically pleasing, manner. Her hair was done up in a haphazard bun, tiny ringlets floating downwards to frame her finely cut face. 

Yes, she would be a satisfactory ornament. 

And mercifully, Ulyanov was nowhere to be seen. When Narcissa saw Lucius, a flicker of muted resignation passed across her face. As he crossed the room to take hold of her arm, he felt her body tense under his touch, little pulse beating fast at the memory of their conversation the previous night. 

Lucius also remembered, and he took a suggestive puff of his cigarette, engulfing her in a cloud of smoke. "It's always a pleasure, Mrs. Miriken," he said insincerely, gripping Narcissa so tightly that her pale skin changed from white to black. The girl didn't call out. 

In a gesture strangely reminiscent of Ulyanov, Zvana inclined her head, a false smile upon her lips. "Do come again, Mr. Malfoy."

----

You don't know gray until you've been out east. Behind the iron curtain, gray isn't just a color, it's the currency, the philosophy, a daily dosage. It invades every facet of life, the architecture: soulless tenement homes, the fashion: factory chic, pop culture: or realistically, lack thereof. Grey worms its way into every single aspect of life until it isn't just a color; it's a taste, a smell, and a sight, utterly oppressive, filling every sense with choking thoughts of doubt, cloying at any residual hope. Hope: Pandora's tiny white bird that is the sheer determination of and driving force behind the firebrands of the human race. It is the fleeting emotion that stokes the flame of revolution. 

For a proletarian utopia, Moscow was pretty damn gray. 

And the Ministry of Magic's diplomatic liaison office to the SDE was no exception. Even decked out for a party, the square gray rectangle of a building seemed subdued, half-alive. The red ribbons that were half-heartedly twined around the wrought iron banister leading up to the front door were covered in snow, their innate vibrant color bleeding out into the Moscow winter, staining the snow a weak shade of candy pink. 

The green wreath on the door was wilted; its festive leaves falling out upon the doorstep in great clumps, like the hair of a middle-aged model, desperately trying to bleach the gray out of her aged locks. If Lucius breathed deeply, he could almost smell the peroxide, or maybe that stench was just from the tall smokestacks of the Moscow's friendly chemical plants, generously dumping thousands of metric tons of carcinogens into their fellow Muscovites' air every year. Because you see, in Communism we all share. 

Gray eyes taking in the front of the deplorable embassy, Lucius's lip curled in scorn. The diplomatic liaison office was run by the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and everyone knew that International Magical Cooperation was the division of the Ministry of Magic for poor boys who wanted desperately to make good. For anyone of any stature to be appointed there was a social black ball, as deadly as the timeless Avada Kedrava. Thus, International Magical Cooperation was full of disgusting scroungers who passed up no opportunity to suck up to Lucius, obviously hoping for some kind of handout. He couldn't even walk into International Magical Cooperation's offices without having four or five half-penny wizards wearing robes that looked like they had been filched out of a trunk at St. Mungo's Youth Hostel kneeling down and offering to kiss his ass. But their efforts were in vain. He didn't donate to charity. 

Bastards. He couldn't stand them. As a race diplomats, and those in the Department of International Magical Cooperation in particular, were good-for-nothing sods surviving on a diet of charity handouts and watered-down soup from the local wizarding shelters. They were the only people convinced of their own worth and any real wizard with half a brain could see through their groundless pride and hand-darned dress robes. As much as they deluded themselves otherwise, schmoozing with real people like himself would never make a diplomat worth anything. 

Lucius wished he could get his hands around the throat of the man who had informed the staff of the Ministry of Magic's Embassy to the SDE that he was in Moscow. Fancying themselves desirable company, the diplomats had invited him, along with a sizable guest list of British wizards in Russia with a yearly income of over 4 million Galleons, to their annual New Year's soirée. Lucius supposed that if the diplomats themselves didn't possess the flow they would try and surround themselves with it in the childish hope that it would rub off. How delusional. 

Lucius would look notoriously bad turning down the invitation, especially considering that he hadn't shown his face in England for almost a year. He'd drop in, cause a stir, prove that he was not dead and slip out again, hopefully before any of the Mudblood diplomats could latch onto him and suck his blood like the leeches they were. They made him fiendishly uncomfortable. "Socializing" with the Mudbloods, if you could even call it that, was like watching someone with the plague, knowing that if they got too close, you were as good as gone. 

Lucius placed his hand upon the flat of the front door, trying to avoid the molting wreath. Narcissa cowered behind him like a frightened mooncalf. Now there was another thing: Narcissa. Physically she was appealing, but she was dumb to the point of annoyance, and he was beginning to believe that she only had half of a brain in her head. Lucius had been called laconic in his day, but he hadn't heard her string more than four words together in the entire time he had known her. Not that he particularly cared to hear her opinion, it would just be a relief to know that the girl could speak and clear up some of the maddening funeral parlor silence that dominated their encounters like a solemn chaperone. He supposed that it was her beauty that branded her so heavily upon his mind, when so many girls faded away into the gray backdrop of his life. Her silvery curls, her wide pale eyes so eerily reminiscent of, well of his own. 

Turning his eyes away from the girl, who looked passable in her pale pink dress (although Lucius privately thought the light dress drained her face of the little color it had; he would have much preferred her in a black gown), he rapped his knuckles against the door. 

It swung open immediately. "Mr. Malfoy! What a wonderful surprise! We didn't think you would come!"

Lucius pasted a thin smile upon his lips, and taking Narcissa by the arm, he confronted his host, a nondescript ass-kissing diplomat with sparse brownish hair and coke-bottle glasses. "I almost didn't," he said flatly, smiling at the diplomat's crushed expression. Reaching into the breast pocket of his heavy cashmere overcoat, Lucius pulled out a cigarette from the same case that bastard Ulyanov had pilfered the day before. "Light?" It was more of a command than a request. The diplomat rushed to comply, snapping his fingers and causing a flame to appear at the end of Lucius's cigarette. 

"The SDE's laws against magic don't apply here!" he said, determined to seem helpful and knowledgeable, when in all actuality, Lucius found the idiot grossly lacking in both respects. "This embassy is a direct extension of English soil, and it abides by the Queen's law alone!"

"Rule Britannia," Lucius said drolly, pulling Narcissa along as he turned away from the tiresome diplomat and walked into the milling crowd without so much as a goodbye.

"Who was that?" the girl asked, reminding him of her presence as she spoke for the first time that night. 

"No one I have to worry about," Lucius snapped. He had never bothered with Mudblood's names; names were wasted on the beasts anyhow.

"He seemed to know you," she persisted, annoying him. He was beginning to prefer her silence if that ensured her blind acquiescence to his will.

"Many people know me," he said, "who I know nothing of." Scowling at her, he took a look at his cigarette, which he hadn't yet smoked, and dropped it on the floor, crushing the flame with the tip of his shoe. "Mudbloods pervert magic," he said, grimacing at the remains of his contaminated cigarette. "They profane it, the most pure of all things, with their unclean use. They are not people like you and me. They're beasts, animals," he slammed his foot down upon the cigarette again, and even though it was already out, he twisted hard, smearing its ashes across the hardwood floor in a blackened rainbow. "They simply have the facilities of speech and movement, but they can't," he tapped his head, looking at the girl, "think. Two hundred years ago the International Confederation of Warlocks ruled that a Mudblood was exactly 1/6 of a full person, and though their official views have changed somewhat since then, there are many of us wizards who still believe that they were correct in that assumption. Mudbloods should be banned from using magic, for their own good. Put in Zoos with the rest of the beasts, but," he added scowling, "there are many who overlook the obvious and disagree." 

"Like me," Lucius whipped around. His jaw dropped somewhat as the woman leaning against the wall next to him emerged from the shadows, wry amusement on her face. "But then again," she said, a hint of mockery in her voice, "I've always been insanely foolish, haven't I, Lucius?" 

He finally found his voice, which had been lost somewhere between his surprise and his alarm. "What are you doing here?" 

"Exactly the same as you," she said. 

"You're lying," he replied, taking a step closer towards her, completely forgetting about Narcissa. 

The woman's smile widened. She grabbed hold of his wrist. "Of course I'm lying." 

"Tell me what you're doing here," he said forcefully, hand tightening about her wrist as she attempted to slide her fingers into his. 

"I need some sort of reparation if I tell you, some sort of payment for my sacrifice," she said, in the same mocking tone she had used earlier.

"What kind of reparation?" he asked, more afraid of her price than eager for her answer. 

"A dance," she purred, taking a step closer to him, the deep black chiffon of her dress brushing against the heavy wool of the overcoat he had not yet removed. 

"No," he said flatly. 

"No?" she raised a silvery-blonde eyebrow, a pout on her painted red lips. 

"I don't dance," he lied, taking a step away from her. 

She reclaimed the lost distance between them with one stride. "You don't dance or you don't dance with me?" 

"I don't dance," he said truthfully, trying to make himself walk away from her. His feet however, would not obey the desperate urgings of his mind, "with you." 

"Ah," she smiled at that, red lips mocking him. "So you remember the last time we danced? I was afraid that you had forgotten." 

"I don't forget," he said, lips narrowing into a thin, unforgiving line. 

She reached up, tracing the line of his jaw. "Neither do I."

He jerked his head away. She laughed. "Do you want to know why I am here or not?" she exhaled slowly, the low tones of her smoky voice making an innocent question seem like a threat. 

"It is your concern, not mine--" he tried to protest. 

"My concern _is _your concern," she countered, squeezing his hand tightly. "You should know that by now, Lucius." 

When he didn't reply, she tilted her head upwards so she could meet his gaze. Her pale irises were lit with the cool flame of utter confidence. "Dance with me." 

And against all of his better judgement, he allowed her to take him by the hand and lead him through the crowd to the almost deserted parquet dance floor, which Lucius supposed the Mudbloods had had installed for the occasions. 

She let go of his hands and he could have turned to run, but somehow, someway, somewhy, he didn't, because after all of this time she still had him in her palm, pulling his strings as one would a toy marionette. 

She spun towards him once again; leg wrapping about his waist as they slowly turned about the floor. He could hear her whisper breathlessly in his ear, whisper his name, his heart was beating so fast it took over the back beat, and the distance between them was a contrived figment of the imagination, but the sight of her was smoke in his eyes, acrid seduction that stung at the edges--

"I've seen your husband," he whispered. 

The music ceased. 

Their dance was over. 

"Oh?" She stepped hurriedly away, feigning an obviously false indifference. "Where? In Spain?" And without waiting for his reply, she pressed on, talking too fast for comfortable conversation. "Funny, as I haven't seen him since last-- when was it, the Spring?" 

"Valentine's Day," Lucius filled in mechanically. "You came up to the Manor with him for father's funeral." 

"Oh that's right I did," she said, crossing her arms over her satin bodice. "Frightful place, the Manor. I don't blame you for fleeing to Spain, Yorkshire is altogether too wet and miserable for my taste, and so lonely, too! Gimmertown is half a days walk and you know when _Gimmertown_," she said the name with intense scorn, "is your closest link to civilization, something is seriously out of joint." She ceased her shallow soliloquy for one harried moment in order to heave a great breath. "And don't get me started on the moors-- those awful, damp, dreary, wicked moors! I can't imagine how you manage to even begin to put up with them, but now that I think about it, I suppose you don't, living in the Spanish villa. Now, tell me about Cordoba, that's somewhere I haven't been since--"

"Why are you here?" he interrupted her prattle, gently touching the edge of her chin and bringing her eye-to-eye with him. 

She paused for a moment before replying, regaining her breath after her unnecessarily long and excruciatingly empty tirade. "I could ask the same of you," she said quietly as he pulled out his silver case of cigarettes and flicked it open. Without being offered, she reached forward and stole one of his smokes, lighting it with a gentle wave of her hand. "Moscow isn't quite the hottest tourist destination on the planet--"

Eyes still focused warily on her face, he plucked a cigarette from the case. She bent forward, lighting it with her own fag. "I'm here on business," he said tersely as she raised the cigarette to her lips and exhaled, gray smoke contrasting starkly with the ruby red of her painted lips. 

  
"As am I," she breathed, "_personal_ business." 

"There's no such thing as personal business," he said flatly, garnishing his statement with a cynical puff of smoke. 

She shook her head ever so slightly, a tiny grin of dissent upon her lips. "Oh no, Lucius. Quite the contrary. Every line, every last bit of business is intensely," she took a step closer to him, "_personal_." 

He stepped away, the nearness of her causing his heart to sink into his stomach and burn in the gall. "You still haven't answered my question." 

"You haven't answered mine," she countered. 

"You never specifically asked," he said, as she smiled slightly at his obstinacy. 

"I came to see you," she said, shrugging the confession off like dead skin. Somehow, her careless manner lessened what would have otherwise been a gut-wrenching revelation. "But you knew that anyway." 

"I did," he agreed. 

"And yet," she breathed softly. "You still needed confirmation." The moment hung between then like a live wire. "Why?" 

The seconds spilled into minutes as time itself held its breath. Yet, he could not bring himself to speak. 

And when she realized that he did not intend to answer she dowsed the tension with a high-pitched laugh and a half-serious question. "Am I always so horribly transparent?" 

"Always," he answered truthfully. 

"But only with you," she replied back, taking a step towards him. "Only with you, Lucius." 

This time he didn't jerk away. 

"I hide nothing from you," she whispered, her breath smelling so intensely of cigarettes and mulled wine that he could almost taste her words. "I don't think that I could. All the world's your ashtray," she whispered headily, fingers tracing the sides of his silken tuxedo jacket. "I'm just your Marlboro. Light me up and burn me-- you're sick and you're beautiful." 

He didn't respond, allowing her to press her hands up against his throat, and the pulse that beat therein. "Do you love me?" 

"No," his pulse quickened. 

Sinfully, she smiled. "Do you love anything?" 

He tried to slide out of her grasp but she wouldn't let him. "Least of all you." 

She only responded with another question, red lips forming phrases rhetorical. "As Adam loved Eve? His damner, his downfall, but nonetheless, a part of him," she exhaled deeply, bathing him in halo of smoke. "I'm a part of you, Lucius, like a rib, a hand, or," she paused momentarily, allowing her painted lips to twirl themselves into a scarlet smile, "a cigarette-- burning slowly away, until there's nothing left but the burn on your fingertips and your insatiable craving for just one more." He could taste her breath upon his lips. "I know you," she continued. "I know you because I _am_ you and I can lie to the world, but I can't lie to myself." 

"Lucius!" a voice interrupted her, rudely reminding him that they were not the only two people in the world. 

"And neither," she whispered, letting go of his jacket as more people rapidly approached them, "can you." 

"Lucius." Malfoy's eyes flickered upwards, away from the woman in the black chiffon to the girl in the pink lace, and the rotund man upon her arm. Narcissa's paunchy companion was coated with a slick sheen of sweat, glistening like body glitter in the dim party light. Narcissa looked harried, her already pale features more white than usual as she strained against the man's arm, looking for any excuse to get away. If Lucius had been a gentleman he would have rescued her, but as he was not, he simply watched Narcissa with a small smile on his face, relishing her obvious discomfort. 

"Lucius," the paunchy man reiterated for the third time, emphasizing that he was on first name terms with the heir to the Malfoy fortune. "Lucius, Lucius, Lucius," the man's glistening jowls vibrated as he spoke. Lucius shuddered. "I saw you abandon the company of this lovely lady for the company," he nodded respectfully towards the woman in the black chiffon dress, "of another. I decided to pick up your dross," he grinned at his own imagined wit, showing all of his yellowing teeth. "After all this is Russia, aren't we supposed to share the wealth?" 

Both Lucius and his companion managed an icy sneer in the face of this God-awful attempt at witty discourse. The paunchy man looked somewhat cowed. 

"In this metaphor as well as in life," Lucius sneered, showing all of his immaculately white teeth, "the goods you are discussing are entirely mine." 

The paunchy man inclined his head slightly, acknowledging, if not accepting defeat. "Then would you at least introduce me to your gorgeous possessions?" he persisted. 

Lucius, having had been instilled from childhood with a small measure of social etiquette, acquiesced. "This is Narcissa," he broke off, realizing that he had no idea what the girl's full name was, "Narcissa…"

"Narcissa Vabka," the girl spoke up for the first time that night, giving the paunchy man a rare, and rather insincere smile. Her grin prompted Lucius to produce one of his own. She possessed enough wit to play along with his lies. 

"Vabka?" the paunchy man, stared at Narcissa, practically lapping her up with his eyes alone. "That sounds vaguely familiar." 

Narcissa opened her mouth to reply, but Lucius cut her off, afraid she might let something slip. "The Vabkas are old friends of the family. They are Russian wand makers, have a large business in the Far East." 

"Of course!" the other man chuckled, compelled to speak by the power of suggestion. "No wonder the name sounded familiar." 

Lucius smiled. His lie had gone over well, now if only the girl would stop looking like a scared chicken and continue to play along. "Ah yes," his heart stopped as the woman in the black chiffon dress opened her mouth. There was a pinch of sadistic humor in her voice. "I remember my childhood days on the Vabka estate well. It was in the Urals, wasn't it, Narcissa dear? Or was it just on the River Lena? It's a truly delightful place, Siberia; I must get back there sometime. But you have to remind me where your estate is exactly, dear. I mean no offense, it's just that I've always been so horrible with Geography, I've no sense of direction whatsoever!" She broke off, a sadist's smirk upon her red lips. "I would get so terribly vexed with you when you stole my brother away for hours on end, horribly childish of me, I know, but, I really can't help myself." Her eyes flickered from the rather stunned Narcissa to the obviously uncomfortable Lucius. She never got sick of watching him squirm. 

The paunchy man bent down, kissing Narcissa's hand. "I always did want to meet a heiress," the girl shot Lucius a panicked glance, crying for help. He ignored her, staring pointedly in the other direction. "Otto Bagman, at your service, Miss Vabka." The fat lecher then looked up. With the taste of once girl's hand still about his lips, he turned around, hungry for the flavor of the other. "Do introduce me, Lucius," Bagman said, eyes never wandering from the woman in the black chiffon. 

Lucius was disgusted at the ravenous glint in Bagman's eye. "This is my sister," he said sulkily, giving the woman in question a disparaging glance. She raised on immaculately manicured eyebrow in reply. Scowling, he looked away. He didn't trust her past the tip of his wand, knowing she would stop at nothing to make him squirm. 

"As a piece of property, I don't know if I'm qualified to introduce myself," she said, directing the sarcasm more towards her brother than the man she was addressing, "but I'll try my best." She stared at Bagman, a false smile lighting up her patrician face. "My name is Ilona." 

Narcissa wondered why she hadn't seen the connection between Ilona and Lucius before, for the familial resemblance was unmistakable. Aside from their deathly cold gray eyes and their silvery blonde hair, which Lucius had slicked back off of his forehead and Ilona pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, they had the same high haughty forehead, and although Lucius's face was sharply defined and sharp at edges while Ilona's features were finely cut, their lips, whether they realized it or not, were twisted into two identical condescending smiles. 

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Malfoy," Bagman iterated, surfacing for air after his lips had remained pressed to the pale flesh of her hand for an obscenely long time. 

"The pleasure, I'm sure," Ilona said, the hard edge in her voice slicing neatly through her sugary smile, "is entirely yours." 

Bagman balked. Lucius smirked. Come wind, come snow, come diabolical Soviet-Death-Eater plots, Ilona never changed. As volatile as she was, she had been the one constant in his life since his Hogwarts graduation nine years earlier. She was his rock to hold onto, the hissing, spitting hellcat that always failed to surprise and thus kept him sane. She was the one sure thing he had to rely upon. 

"I don't know," a significantly paler Bagman stuttered, bending out of his bow to stare at Ilona with a taken aback expression, "what I did to offend, but--"

"You're very presence is offensive," Lucius broke in, following Ilona's lead and throwing all of his etiquette out of the window. Besides, he couldn't allow for her to have all of the fun. "What are you doing here in Moscow anyway?" He coupled the insult with an inquiry, hoping to worm what could be useful information out of the sniveling Bagman, who looked about ready to regurgitate his no doubt extensive supper all over the hem of Ilona's black chiffon dress. Some men were just born to be pawns. Otto Bagman was one of them. 

"I'm working here," Bagman said, slightly annoyed, "in the embassy. I was transferred from the Diagon Alley offices three months ago. I owled you about it at the time." 

"Oh?" Lucius raised a pale eyebrow. "I didn't notice." In an effort to antagonize the paunchy bureaucrat further, he reached over, placing his arm around Narcissa's slim shoulders. Her skin was like ice to the touch, muscles tensing under the weight of his arm. Her jugular rested just beside the crook of his elbow and he could feel her pulse beat, franticly throbbing, like the wings of a caged bird. 

The girl wasn't the only one to tense up at Lucius's show of affection. Bagman's bushy red brows knitted together and a lightning bolt of white-hot fury flashed across Ilona's patrician features. 

"It's a pity" she began, chewing on her words like a piece of old beef jerky, as hardened and stringy as catgut, "that you live so far away from England, Mr. Bagman. You'd be a very," she took a step towards the pudgy man, "welcome guest at our Manor." 

"I'm not sure that I'd like to partake in your hospitality, Miss Malfoy," Bagman said tersely, his Yorkshire brogue getting more pronounced as his anger increased. 

"You may not want to partake in Lucius's hospitality," Ilona said silkily, laying a hand upon Bagman's thick arm. "You mustn't let my brother vex you. He's a spoilt child really, you can't take him too seriously." Though her smile was as sweet as a sugar quill, Ilona's eyes were flashing something dangerous, and Narcissa got the sense that she wasn't really talking to Bagman at all. "He even upsets me. I don't know how I manage to put up with him." Narcissa felt Lucius go rigid beside her, his listless grasp on her shoulder turning into a vice-like grip. She bit her lip. 

"Yes, Mr. Bagman," Ilona purred, purposefully ignoring her brother's knee-jerk reaction as she sidled up to the ample bureaucrat, black chiffon dress flush against the cheap material of his tuxedo. "I'm sure you'll find I offer hospitality of a different sort."

Bagman's anger had been skillfully stripped away, leaving nothing but his naked surprise. His eyes were wide with surprise as Ilona offered him a luscious smile, his mouth curved into a tiny "o" of shock. 

"Ah…" Bagman managed to bluster as Ilona wrapped herself about him like a cloak. "That's a kind offer, I don't see how I could say--"

"Goodbye," Lucius cut him off, not wanting to see anymore of Ilona's disgustingly ostentatious foreplay. While his outward manner was relatively calm and unruffled, his hand gripped Narcissa's shoulder so tight that her pale white skin became black, and antithesis in the flesh. "Narcissa is quite tired and she insists that I take her home." He dipped his head, "Bagman, Ilona--"

"Are you sure," his sister said abruptly, halting Lucius in mid-escape, "that _Narcissa_," she said the name with the utmost scorn, "is the one doing the insisting?" 

"It's been a pleasure seeing you both," Lucius lied, churning out vapid pleasantries in a futile attempt to ignore her.

"Or is in you who is indisposed, Lucius?" Ilona continued, overlapping his inane chatter. "Is it you who is insisting upon the premature departure?" 

Lucius turned towards her, gray eyes holding nothing but malice. "I'll say hello to your husband for you, how's that Ilona?" 

Bagman visibly recoiled, eyes flickering from brother to sister with a poorly disguised look of disgust upon his face. Ilona looked as if she had just been slapped. Dropping the paunchy Scot like he was a broken toy she took a step towards Lucius, her gray eyes reflecting the same cold hatred he held within his own. It was like looking in a mirror. "I see its folly to keep you waiting any longer," she hissed, a red flush coloring her translucently pale cheeks. "Its high time you got what you paid for in that whore," derisively, she jerked her head towards Narcissa. 

"What?" Lucius said, color draining from his face as he feigned bewilderment badly. His worst fears had just been realized. 

"You heard what I said," she sneered, the red flush in her cheeks contrasting starkly with the black chiffon of her dress. "As did your friend who will undoubtedly tell all of his friends who--"

"The girl," he said, jerking Narcissa roughly by the arm, offering her up to Ilona like a specimen, "is not a whore." 

Ilona laughed hollowly. "It's written all over her, Lucius." She turned the full force of her scornful gaze upon Narcissa, and although she was speaking to Lucius, her words were really directed towards his companion. "The way she moves, the way she talks, the way she looks at you, as if she were a naughty child and you were her father with his belt. She terrified of you," by now, Ilona's voice had reached a fevered pitch, "It's painfully obvious." 

"Ilona," Lucius hissed, his already pale face stark white. "Contain yourself. I haven't seen you like this," he added maliciously for Bagman's benefit, "since your husband left you." 

From the look of Ilona's face, Lucius was obviously smearing salt into wounds that had not yet healed. "On thing I can say for my husband." she sneered, eyes still glued to the terrified Narcissa, "is that he freely admits to his indiscretions." 

"You're always," Lucius snapped, "so subtle." 

"What can I say?" she sneered back, "it runs in the family." 

"Narcissa," Lucius dipped his head at Ilona and a rather shell-shocked Bagman. "Is tired. I'm afraid we're going to have to retire prematurely."

"Is she really tired, Lucius?" Ilona persisted, crossing her arms over her strapless black bodice. "Is she really? Or is it you the one who are uncomfortable?" 

But she never got her reply, for they were already gone, through the embassy's swinging double doors and into the swirling Muscovite snow. 

It wasn't as if Ilona had really needed confirmation anyway.

"So," Bagman cleared his throat nervously, an expectant grin on his face. "About that hospitality of yours…"

----

He watched her almost sadly, silvery blonde hair spread out about her head like a halo, the soft twist of ice in the air causing her uneven breaths to freeze into tiny puffs of white. She was wrapped in his wool overcoat; her body had been shivering so much in the mid-winter chill that he had relinquished it, deciding to brave the snow in his tuxedo jacket. But now, even that had been discarded, lying forgotten on the floor of his hotel room as his eyes traveled across her slight frame. 

Narcissa. 

"Are you married, Lucius?" she asked quietly, her eyes barely open, painted lids hooding her tiny sliver of an iris. 

"Why?" he asked automatically, the pale moonlight bathing their faces in an ethereal light. 

"You're a bachelor," she said, rolling towards him, his coat slipping down her back and exposing a shoulder nearly as white as the cotton bed she laid upon. 

It was a while before he replied. "How did you know?" 

She smiled, gratified that he confirmed her guess as true. "You have that air about you." 

"Do I?" he said quietly. "Maybe I have yet to meet the right person." 

"No." A shadow passed over her elfin features. "It is too late for you, I think." 

"Ah." He forced himself not to look at her, lest he betray any emotion other than cool stoicism. "And as for you?" 

She followed his gaze, and although she spoke to him, her focus was directed out the window at the sky beyond. "Its is too late for me as well." 

The pale moonlight barely illuminated the shadows on their faces. 

----

The streetlight wavered like an unsure politician, flickering on and off in the blink of an eye. In fact, the only thing that could be discerned was that the lighting fixture was on its last legs, be they illuminated or otherwise. 

Josef Dzhugashvilli lurked in the shadows just beyond the faint circle of asphalt illuminated periodically by the flickering street lamp. All of the other lights on the road had long since died, and the state that had installed them was far too concerned in its own affairs to give a thought to replacing them, so the road was cloaked in darkness, except for the brief instants when the dying streetlight flickered on, casting the entire block in an ethereal half-glow, not unlike that of a strobe light. If he concentrated hard enough, squinting through the street in the brief instants when it was illuminated, Dzhugashvilli could make out a small cottage, made out of wood the color of purple toffee. The tiny home looked more like a child's dollhouse than any real residence. This impression was only amplified by the fact that it was flanked on all sides by tall, faceless apartment blocks built in the soulless utilitarian style embraced by Soviet architects. 

It was the one dot of individuality Dzhugashvilli could see in the entire city, and it was also the home of Alexander Miriken. Not that it was home to Alexander Miriken anymore. No, he had seen to that. Dzhugashvilli remembered a night nearly ten years ago when he had waited exactly as he did now, back pressed hard against the frozen concrete of this very tenement house, a white witch wind whipping by and snagging him with her icy cat o' nine tails. His entire body shivered as he pulled his fur hat down low over his frozen ears, letting out all his breath out in a puff of white. 

Dzhugashvilli preferred to move under the cover of darkness, even when arresting a man such as Alexander Miriken. 

Alexander Miriken haunted Dzhugashvilli's waking thoughts, obstinately living on, even four years after he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. 

But it was only fitting that Miriken; damnably obstinate in life would remain so in his post-mortem state. He was the only man who Dzhugashvilli had even tracked who had regarded the KGB agent's constant surveillance with a sick sort of amusement, playing with his new shadow as if they were engaged in the mockable travesty of a game, instead of a struggle that would ultimatly decide his life… and his death. 

He was the only man Dzhugashvilli had ever interned who had beat the carefully crafted system of dehumanization the State affectionately referred to as its Gulags. Miriken had been obedient to a sinister degree, playing up to his captors until they were the ones in chains, under his total control. 

He was the only man Dzhugashvilli had met who simply refused to die. 

Miriken was resurrected in the rhetoric of the Sad Clown; the dead man's ideals and tactics replicated almost blow by blow in the work of the very living, quite infamous terrorist. Though Dzhugashvilli had no intention of admitting it to the terrified woman, he had believed Zvana when she had denied any involvement with the Sad Clown. It seemed incredibly unlikely that a woman, even of Zvana's wit, would have the intelligence to carry off such a systematic plan of bombings. He was of the firm belief that the entire female sex together couldn't even conceive of such an intricate plot. Their minds just didn't work that way. But, he found himself watching Alexi's old home, for Miriken was the only lead he had. If Dzhugashvilli had been the sort of man who believed in ghosts…

But no. It was impossible. 

But then again, Miriken had always been impossible. Impossible to track, impossible to capture, and once imprisoned, impossible to contain. And though Dzhugashvilli hardly dared to admit it to himself, impossible for him to comprehend. 

Alexander Miriken was the antithesis of everything Dzhugashvilli stood for and held close; order, obidence, honor. To make the situation even more infuriating, the man refused to lay down and die like the common criminal he was. If Miriken was so worthless, why wouldn't he just accept Dzhugashvilli's inevitable victory? 

Dzhugashvilli shook his head. He could not doubt. Doubt was the root of despair and despair was a one-way road straight towards defeat. 

His eyes traveled down the long street-- darkness seeming to press in on him from all sides. But that was all right, Dzhugashvilli could handle the darkness. It cloaked him, swallowing him whole. Darkness had no doubt… it just was. He didn't need light to see, guided by the firebrand resolution of his own hate, which was directed at one man and one man alone. For despite rational thought, in spite of everything four years and disregarding six feet of solid earth, Dzhugashvilli was sure that Miriken was at the bottom of whatever was going on. Once again, Dzhugashvilli's eyes wandered along the expanse of the snow-covered street to the flickering street lamp, currently out like, well, a light. And then, he saw a flicker of movement in the blackness that would have been bathed in light were the lamp in proper working order. 

Breath coming out in soft puffs of white Dzhugashvilli began to walk forward slowly, his boots crunching on the snow. His heart was beating frantically within his old chest, straining against his tired ribcage, almost daring to break loose of the body that had held it for the last 62 years. A panicked feeling took complete control of him, steering him with the kind of urgency borne of raw intuition. He had to get to that lamp and the shadow moving through the darkness underneath it. So he began to run, feet sending up small whirlwinds of powdery white snow, footfalls sounding like muted drumbeats on the coated asphalt street. And amazingly, within a few seconds, he was almost there-- boots sliding on the ice, snow slipping over the leather lip of his shoes and melting between his sweaty toes, chilling him more effectively than any bitter north wind. 

Dzhugashvilli reached the lamp. Panting hard, he laid his gloved hand upon the cold metal for support. It had been years since he had performed any sort of physical exercise and the short sprint had winded him completely. He dropped his head, letting it rest gently against the fur collar of his coat; he didn't used to be this out of shape, especially during his army days—

There was a slight movement to his left. Dzhugashvilli jumped like a scared cat, and at that instant the street lamp flickered on, bathing him and his immediate surroundings in a harsh pool of intense light. There, a mere kissing distance from where he stood, was Alexander Miriken. His taut hollow features were curved into a spectral grin by the scar running up the left side of his face, a scar given to Miriken by Dzhugashvilli himself. 

He was unmistakable. 

And Dzhugashvilli had never understood the phrase "scared as hell" until this very moment. Dead men do not rise from their graves; dead men do not haunt the living; dead men do not smile and say—

"Hello Josef," Miriken iterated. His ghostly voice sounded amused. 

The street lamp flickered to black. Choking back a cry, Dzhugashvilli reached forward to touch his former prisoner to see if he was more than a sadistic dream borne from the recesses of a tortured mind. Dzhugashvilli's hand caught nothing but frigid air. Miriken, if he had even been there at all, was gone. 

Dzhugashvilli heaved a deep breath. Dead men do not walk the earth. And he had seen Miriken's ghost with his own two eyes. There was only one possible explanation, but it was an explanation that defied all logic, all reason, and anything stated by the official documents in the Kremlin. But, Dzhugashvilli thought wryly, only an explanation that did all three of these things would be worthy of his nemesis. 

Alexander Miriken was alive. 

Hand trembling, he took a step forward, as the lamp flicked on again, to reveal a street nearly deserted except for a couple moving slowly at the end of the street. Eyes narrowing, Dzhugashvilli recognized the man as the disconcerting blonde he had met in Zvana's office the day before. Slowly he took a breath, almost unable to control his adrenaline-borne excitement. The blonde would lead him to Zvana, and Zvana would lead him to her Alexi. 

----

"So where have you been?" Sirius was waiting in the doorway of the Russian Roulette when Narcissa got home, sliding in through the narrow doorway of the club, Lucius's heavy overcoat still slung over her shoulders. It was only early evening so the Roulette hadn't yet opened its doors and it was still essentially deserted. Ulyanov and Zvana sat in one corner of the club conversing in low tones. Sasha, who seemed more like a permanent fixture in the Roulette than an employee was spit-shining his shot glasses while James sat across from him at the bar, a morose expression on his puerile face as he stared off into space. 

"Out with Malfoy," she replied, brushing the melting layer of snow off of the woolen collar. "You knew that." 

"I did." Grinning wickedly at her he motioned her towards and empty table with one chair. Sliding it out and offering it to her he jumped onto the table itself. "So how was the evening? Delightfully exciting I'm sure." She didn't reply, but then again she didn't really need to, her glare was enough. "Well," he continued to tease, "while you've been off painting the town red I've been slaving away." 

Narcissa assumed a somewhat skeptical expression. 

"Would you believe working half-heartedly?"

She rolled her eyes. 

"How about thinking about following some leads?"

"Give up, Sirius," she said in a long-suffering way, knowing in exactly what direction he was going to take their conversation. 

"Fine," he said, still sporting a disarming smile. "I'll be frank, I'm using you to get information, so you better speak up unless you want me to drop you and run home to the wife and kids." His puerile grin betrayed his joke. 

"My lips are sealed," she said, smiling for the first time since that morning. "You'll have to find yourself a new mistress." 

"Hmm," he managed to look mildly disappointed. "And I was starting to like you too." 

"Sirius--" she felt like a giggly schoolgirl, or at least how she thought a giggly schoolgirl would feel, as she had never been to school herself.

"Alright," he threw up his hands, feigning defeat. "You have me, I'll be serious." Not being an English speaker, she didn't pick up on his intentional (and rather bad) pun. "Tell me about Vladimir Ulyanov." 

"No," she said flatly, her face instantly loosing its rare grin. 

"I meant," he corrected himself, trying to save the conversation from rapid unabated descent into uncharted wilderness of angst, "the historical Vladimir Ulyanov." He supposed that it was a good a place to start as any. It wasn't as if he had any real leads other than Ulyanov himself. To be frank, he wasn't even completely sure what he was trying to find, other than the truth, and with every passing day in Moscow, Sirius was becoming more and more unsure that such a thing even existed. And so he masked his fear under the guise of careless ineptitude and hoped Narcissa could provide him with some easy answers to what had so far been a Herculean struggle. He had no way of knowing that in a span of a few short minutes, he would get more answers than he had bargained for. 

"Read an encyclopedia," she snapped, sure he would find a way to make her reveal something that he wasn't supposed to know. 

"You, love," he schmoozed, leaning forward and tipping her chin up so he could stare her in the eye, "are my encyclopedia." Charm was a weapon that had worked very well for him in the past, with every female from Lily Evans to Professor McGonagall.

"I thought I was just a mistress," she played along, blue eyes looking especially alluring under her curtain of silvery lashes. 

"You can be my encyclopedia too," he said, trying to focus himself on the issue at hand. Now was not a time to get diverted on a girl, even a very beautiful—no drop-jaw gorgeous girl upon whom pink was not that bad of a color—

__

Focus, Sirius. He cut himself off, feeling rather guilty when he looked away, breaking their gaze. "Tell me about Vladimir Ulyanov." 

Narcissa obviously did not want to talk about history, even if it was a conversation with Sirius. "Vladimir Ulyanov was the first Secretary General. He took over after the fall of the Provisional Government. Eventually he died. End of story." 

He waited for her to say more. Nothing came. "So he was a dictator?" he prompted, hoping to get something from her, anything that may help him get to the bottom of this mess. 

"Lenin was the first leader of Soviet Russia," she said, voice strung with impatience. "His supporters overthrew Kerensky's Provisional Government." 

"You know a lot about history," Sirius remarked absently, his mouth generating inane filler as his head tried to string the pieces of the broken puzzle together into a cohesive whole. 

"What do you mean?" she snapped suspiciously, her angry reaction jerking him out of his reverie. 

"It was a compliment," he said, a little taken aback. "Nothing more." 

She didn't contradict him outright. Instead, she shook her head and looked away, silently seething. 

He felt obligated to try and smooth over any offense he may have inadvertently caused. "It's just that a girl like you--"

Her head jerked upwards, ice-gray eyes smoldering with fury. "A girl like me what?"

"Narcissa--"

"No, Sirius," she said, jaw white with tension. "I would really like to know what you think about girls like me. How you think that a whore doesn't have a right to know anything except how you like it--"

"You're not a whore," but his voice sounded dead even to his own ears, his eyes focused blankly on the ground. 

"Don't bullshit me, Sirius!" she snapped. "I _am_ a whore, and maybe it's not something to be proud of but when it comes between screwing strangers or sleeping in the gutter, I don't see a decision. Maybe you'd have moral squabbles, but its pretty clear-cut to me. Honor doesn't fill your belly."

His eyes flickered upwards towards her face, two red spots of fury forming on top of her cheekbones. A small placating smile rested upon his lips. "Neither does love." 

She turned to look at him so fast her movement was almost violent. Though she put up a façade of disgust, her pulse quickened. "What are you trying to say?" 

"Nothing," he smiled at her again, teasing her to interpret his comment at will. "I was just making an observation." 

"You can get sent to the Gulags for that," she said quietly, feeling her anger run out of her like melted snow, pooling around her feet and being absorbed by the solid concrete floor. 

"For what?" he asked, eyes never wavering from her face. 

"Making observations," she replied, voice lowered to a mere whisper. 

His lips twisted into a lopsided grin. "You're worth it." 

She couldn't suppress the smile, although she turned her face away so he couldn't see it. "You just are trying to flatter me into telling you about Ulyanov," she said, half-joking. 

He rolled with her rare attempt at humor. "You've seen through my gig. I may as well give it all up and head back to Liverpool." And slid off of the table, making as if to go from the door. She reached out and caught his arm before he had taken two steps. He spun around on his heel, eyes laughing. "Well?"

"What do you want to know?" she said in a mock long-suffering way. 

Grinning, he sat down beside her, swinging his legs off the side of the table like a little boy. "I knew you'd come around." 

"Don't push me," she said tersely. 

"Tell me," Sirius leaned forward, trying to fish a question out of the boatload of facts swirling about his brain, weaving through the crevices of his psyche like wraiths, spreading confusion and bewilderment in their wake. The deeper he got, the more muddled the waters became. "Tell me…" he paused, deciding to settle on a random question and see how far that took him. "Tell me how Ulyanov took the name Lenin. I'm supposing he wasn't content with just Vlad."

Narcissa pointedly ignored his wisecrack and folding her hands in her lap, she began to speak. "When Lenin was born, the Romanov Czars were still in power. The Romanovs ran Russia like a police state. No dissent was allowed." 

Sirius breathed outwards through his teeth, considering her words. "Ironic. So not much has changed." 

"No," Narcissa agreed. "Not much has changed." She shrugged slightly, shoulders hunched with resignation. "So much for Revolution. The Czars had forced labor camps in Siberia, and most people who criticized the Romanovs were sent there. Ulyanov wanted to avoid this fate. So he settled upon a pseudonym--"

"Lenin," Sirius filled in. 

"And published his writings on Communism under that name," Narcissa continued. 

"But why did Ulyanov actually choose Lenin?" Sirius asked, leaning forward so that his shoulder brushed against Narcissa's. 

She gave him a small smile, looking up at him through her large doe-eyes. "The story I've heard is that he went to see the first Russian production of the Pagacalli in Moscow. The man playing the lead had the last name of Lenin, and Ulyanov was so impressed with his performance that he took the name." 

"And Pagacalli is?" Sirius had never been an opera buff; his only image of it had always been restrained to old men in tights singing so high it made him ache. 

"An opera," Narcissa said, shrugging, "which I've never seen. It's one of Miriken's favorites. He says that it's a tragedy though about a troop of circus performers. The lead is a sad clown."

Automatically, his eyes flickered across the room to where Vladimir Ulyanov sat, a cigarette dangling listlessly between his fingers. But he didn't smoke his fag; instead the old man periodically passed it to Zvana who would take a long drag. Ulyanov's eyes were focused on the vodka glass in front of him, a thin piece of tissue stretched over the lip. With a flick of his wrist, Ulyanov would drop hot ash onto the tissue, watching, entranced, to see how long the fragile paper would hold before it collapsed, burning away into nothingness. Ulyanov passed the cigarette to Zvana, who obediently took a puff. Ulyanov then took the cigarette between his own fingers and flicked the hot ash onto the tissue with careless accuracy. The tissue caved, falling into the alcohol with a loud fizzle. For the briefest of instants, the old man's lips curved into a slight smile, but then Ulyanov looked up from his game and his cold gray eyes met Sirius's gaze. 

Vladimir Ulyanov: the birth name of Lenin. Lenin, the sad clown. It was a simple geometric theorem, if a=b and b=c then a=c. Vladimir Ulyanov, the sad clown. It was so Goddamn obvious, and so diabolically brilliant. 

From across the room, Ulyanov's thin lips curved into an equally slim smile as he plucked the cigarette from between Zvana's lips. Surrounded by a halo of the smoke he took the fag lazily between his fingers and smashed it down upon the wooden table, dowsing the tiny pinprick of flame. His icy gaze never wavered from Sirius's own. 

For once, Ulyanov's subtlety left little to be inferred. Sirius could feel the metaphorical gun barrel as it pressed into his temple, hard metal scraping his skin. 

There are six chambers in a gun. Six chambers and one bullet. What are your chances of survival?

If someone asked you to play Russian Roulette, what would you say?

But the gun barrel turned out to be nothing more than Narcissa's gentle touch, brushing his hair tenderly from his temple and meeting his lips with a kiss, small and unsure. Sirius closed his eyes and prayed that the torture would soon cease. No one knows when they would run into a tight spot, but Moscow was turning out to a regular Spanish Inquisition, a vicious cycle of pain and passion-- intensity untapped and thus utterly inebriating. His head spun and soul ached with the red-hot distress of the spirit. He tried to will himself to forget everything: Ulyanov, James, Malfoy, even Narcissa, and simply loose himself in the moment, and find an escape from the inescapable task of living. Her lips brushed against his, delicate as a baby's slumber and he sunk into her with all of a child's open innocence, accepting her love, her tenderness not as a contrived part of Ulyanov's high stakes game, but as genuine truth. The only way to cope was to suspend his undying disbelief. 

And for a moment, it almost worked. 

Almost. 

James's snide tone drew him back to reality with a sharp jerk, "Really Sirius," he said snippily, regarding Narcissa with undisguised disgust. "If you two got any closer, I'd feel obligated to write home to your wife." 

Narcissa froze, her eager hands growing cold as they fell limply from his neck to hang dead at her sides. Sirius's heart leapt into his throat, twisted and bleeding as he reached out for her blindly, but she had already begin to run—

Sirius leapt from his makeshift seat on the table and hurled past James, who was smiling in an extremely self-righteous manner. Once again, he chased her through the club, though this time around it was completely absent of clubbers. He vaulted over one of the deserted tables, but his longer legs almost didn't equate to her desperation and she reached for the doorknob, panting from the flight. Her knuckles were white with fury. 

"Narcissa, please," he began futilely. 

"Your wife?" she yelled, twisting away as he tried to catch her wrist. "Your fucking wife! Just get away from me--"

"You're a whore," James made himself exceptionally useful. "What did you expect from him? Exclusive love? That he'd marry you instead?" 

"You stay out of this!" Sirius yelled. 

"Does marriage mean anything to you, Sirius?" James yelled, an angry red flush creeping to his soft cheeks. "I tried to hold my tongue but you've gone too far."

"You don't understand, James," Sirius said, trying to keep his voice even and his growing anger in check. 

James ignored his friend's comment. "No, Sirius, it's you who doesn't understand. What does 'til death do us part mean to you?"

"_James_," Sirius grit his teeth together trying to shut out his friend's accusations. 

James would not be silenced. "I'd _die_ before I did anything like this to Lily--"

"I said stay out of it!" Sirius exploded, slamming his fist onto the wall beside Narcissa. Turning away from the furious woman, he moved towards upon his childhood friend. 

"I'm your friend, Sirius!" James yelled back, unfazed by the fact that Padfoot was advancing upon him his face contorted in fury. "This is what I'm supposed to do! Let me help you." 

"Help me!" Sirius raised his fist, but James stood tall, knowing innately that he could go to hell and back before Padfoot would strike him. For once, James's flawed intuition was correct. Sirius stood paralyzed for a moment, his hand inches above James's head, and then slowly, painfully he let it drop, his rising anger suddenly turning into limp lethargy. Because the worst thing was that James was right. Selfish, pompous, naïve, and still—always—James was right. 

Sirius's shoulders slumped, and it was as if the life had been wrung out of him. Limp as a wet rag, he didn't know where to go, which place to turn. Now, when it mattered the most, he found his confidence wounded at its very root. He couldn't be sure of anything any longer. "Help this, Prongs," he said quietly, reaching forward and taking Narcissa by the arm. His voice cracked in desperation. "Help _this_." 

He kissed her. She squirmed in his arm, trying to turn away, but he held her fast, lips pressing against hers, trying to make a confessional out of another sin, penance through peccadillo.

And then, Lucius Malfoy stepped through the door of the Russian Roulette. "I forgot my coat--" He broke off, a deathly silence overtaking the entire club. He stared at Narcissa, motionless in Sirius's arms. She was still wearing his overcoat. "Oh," he said icily. "I see."

Narcissa finally twisted out of Sirius's desperate kiss, her cheeks flushed with fury and embarrassment. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She was unable to set words to her fury. 

So a desperate silence held the club in which Lucius reached a trembling hand into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a cigarette, which he lit with a wave of his hand. A thin trail of smoke rose from his lips. Still, no one spoke.

The door slammed open behind Lucius and Josef Dzhugashvilli burst in, gun held in front of his like a wand at ready. Brushing past Lucius as if he didn't even exist, his tiny eyes scanned the nearly deserted club, finally settling upon the table where Zvana sat, frozen with fear. She remained immobile under Dzhugashvilli's cold stare. All color had drained from her face, leaving her the stark pale color of dried cod. A calculating sort of smile slid across Dzhugashvilli's lips. "Get up," he sneered, disgusted amusement on his face. He had the exuberance of a chess champion, glowing after he placed his opponent's king in the inescapable mate. Zvana didn't move, though Sirius wasn't sure if her immobility was borne of pure obstinacy or abject terror. Whatever the reason, Zvana looked incapable of any motion at all, white knuckled hands gripping the table like they would never come undone, held captive within the vice of terror. "Get up, Miriken," Dzhugashvilli repeated a harder edge in his voice. The KGB agent had lost all of his previous satisfaction, the empty emotion now replaced by a merciless anger. Zvana didn't so much as blink, let alone stand up. 

Sirius could see the muscles in Dzhugashvilli's jaw throb with anger, but when he spoke, his voice was unnaturally even, commanding in its calmness. "You're making a very big mistake, Miriken." Sirius didn't even realized that the KGB agent had fired until Ulyanov's shot glass exploded into a thousand tiny shards, skittering across the bar table like the horrible travesty of New Year's Snow. 

"As violence seems to be the only language that you comprehend," Dzhugashvilli hissed maliciously, looking over the barrel of his quiet loaded gun. "I don't know how I can be more persuasive than that. Now get up, Miriken and put your hands on your head or I will fire my weapon and I will not miss." 

Sirius's eyes instantly flickered to Zvana to gauge her reaction. However, the woman sat unmoved, frozen with fear. The tips of her fingers trailed listlessly in the puddle of spilt vodka, rapidly spreading across the wooden tabletop. 

A sudden flash of movement jerked Sirius's eyes away from the scene. Very slowly, Vladimir Ulyanov was getting up from his seat at the table. Almost mockingly, his cold gray eyes never moving from Dzhugashvilli's own, Ulyanov lifted his arms and placed them on the top of his head. 

Dzhugashvilli tilted his head towards the door, "Out." 

Ulyanov began to walk forward. In all actuality, he was a very tall man, easily several inches bigger than Dzhugashvilli, who, despite his loaded weapon, looked incredibly weak and insignificant next to his prisoner. Still, the KGB agent cleared his throat and began to address the other man. "Dr. Alexander Alexandrovitch Miriken, in the presence of these civilian witnesses, I sentence you to death in the name of the People. For as a citizen of the United Soviet Socialist Republics, you are subject to the justice of its State--"

"Justice?" Miriken laughed hollowly, speaking to Dzhugashvilli for the first time. "I've met the Gulags, the tribunals, the special operative, but never once have I encountered justice within your beloved State."

"You have been convicted of deliberate escape from Gulag 117," Dzhugashvilli easily ignored his prisoner, considering with his canned official speech, "vandalism of the aforementioned State institution, political insurrection, and the murder of 1432 fellow Citizens over the past four years under the pseudonym of the Sad Clown."

"You say," Miriken interrupted, taking a step forward, "that I have been convicted of these crimes. When, Josef, was my trial?" 

Dzhugashvilli's lips cracked into a sneer. "Don't play games with me, Alexander Alexandrovitch."

"It's a fair question," the other man retorted. 

Dzhugashvilli shook his head, "And you don't merit an answer. Stop wasting my time, Miriken, or I will carry out the sentence here and now without following regulations and taking you back to headquarters. Don't try me." 

Miriken didn't crack a sweat, but his response was barely more audible than a whisper. "You lead, Dzhugashvilli. You have the gun." 

Dzhugashvilli's thin lips pursed together as he gestured towards the door once again, this time with his pistol. 

Complacent for once, Miriken took a step towards the door, then another, and one more still, passing Sirius, Narcissa, Lucius—

--Where Miriken had ever learned to move so quickly, Sirius would never know. In a single instant, he had leapt forward, right arm wrapping itself around James's throat, strangling Prongs's terrified yell. As he pulled the boy in front of his like a shield, Miriken's left hand dived into his pocket, returning with the pistol he had used to threaten Sirius the morning before. His face an impassive mask, Miriken pressed the gun into James's temple, undoing the safety with a quick movement of his fingers. James whimpered. 

Dzhugashvilli didn't miss a beat. Leveling his gun, he spun around and fired-- straight at Zvana, who hadn't so much as twitched all throughout her husband's arrest and the subsequent mayhem, paralyzed with shock. But even shock couldn't keep her immobile when she was faced with the Angel of Death. 

She crumpled into the pool of spilt vodka; clear liquid stained a cloudy red. 

Sirius leapt forward with an indecipherable roar of fury, lunging for James, possessed with the vague half-baked idea of wrestling Prongs away from Miriken. He was infamous for doing extremely stupid things therefore leaping in front of an armed, deranged, and altogether unstable man, even with noble motives, was straight up his alley. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't Miriken who fired but Dzhugashvilli, obviously wanting no audience intervention. Sirius hit the floor before he even reached Miriken. 

Dzhugashvilli turned back towards his one time prisoner silently, and although he did not speak, his eyes radiated nothing but cold fury, silently stating: _I'll play your game_. 

As for Miriken himself, his wife's death had only awakened in him a strange fury, for anger is the easiest venue for the desperate. Grief was a luxury that he could not afford, so focused he was on man's primary goal since time began: survival. 

Eat or be eaten. 

Kill or be killed. 

So Miriken tightened his grip around James's throat, pressing the barrel of his gun so deep into the his forehead that he knocked Prongs's glasses askew, letting them slip dangerously down the bridge of the boy's nose. 

"Shoot away, he is nothing to me," Dzhugashvilli sneered. On the outside he was as cool and dispassionate as a corpse though a faint red blush rose to his cheeks and betrayed his hidden anxiety. 

There was a large crash behind the agent, as two new men burst through the door. Both were dressed in government issue black overcoats, long black sniper rifles in their grip. Turning his head halfway back, Dzhugashvilli smiled, and nodded towards the men. "Pavel Andreiovitch, Nikoli Ivonovitch," he addressed the two newcomers. "Guard the door. Make sure no one leaves." The men, presumably Dzhugashvilli's reinforcements, hurried to oblige, one standing on either side of the front door to the club. 

For Narcissa, it was surreal experience looking at the entire scene. Here was the Russian Roulette, reeking of blood and full of armed men, when just a stone's throw away was Zvana's idyllic home, visible through the open door, full of warm light and wooden floors and hand-knitted afghans. Not for the first time, Narcissa wondered what had possibly prompted the Mirikens to throw away their peaceful existence for a worthless hole like the Roulette, a fountainhead of sweet pain and selfish pleasure. Gazing at the body slumped across the table, she realized with a lurch that she would never know the answer, for Zvana had paid the ultimate price for her folly. 

"Well, Alexander Alexandrovitch," Dzhugashvilli said quietly. "You are outnumbered. Don't be foolish. Put down your weapon and allow us to carry out the sentence." 

Miriken, generally as calm and unruffled as a frozen fish, was the polar opposite of his usual self. His thin face was red and shiny with sweat, which caused his dark gray hair to cling to his forehead in tiny clumps. 

James looked just about ready to shit his in pants as his gaze traveled across the concrete floor of the Roulette to where Sirius lay, a small puddle of blood seeping out from under his limp form. James bit his lip, praying that Padfoot was only unconscious, praying that Sirius would managed to find a way to get them out of this deathtrap, begging whatever God that was out there that they would make it home in one piece. Fuck one piece-- that they would make it home alive. 

It's amazing how precious life really is when it gets snatched away. 

Miriken opened his mouth to retort, but he never got the opportunity. 

Narcissa wasn't aware that things could happen so incredibly fast. Sasha, who had been standing silently in the corner, made a wild lunge at Dzhugashvilli, which was somewhat hampered by the fact that he only had one leg. The old man overbalanced and fell onto the cold concrete floor. The KGB agent however, didn't miss a beat. Dzhugashvilli wheeled away from Miriken to place his gun over Sasha's inert form. 

He fired once. 

(_Without this story:_

A bartender would still be alive.) 

Miriken didn't wait around to follow his one-time sidekick to the great Gulag in the sky. Arm still twisted about James's throat, he rushed towards the escape door, dull iron ringing hard against the concrete wall as he threw it open. 

Dzhugashvilli's bullets buried themselves in the iron door as he spun away from Sasha's corpse, feet pounding on the hard concrete floor and out into the street beyond like the ghastly continuation of the heartbeat he had just stopped. 

Made heedless by high adrenaline and raw emotion, Narcissa ignored the KGB agents standing behind her with very large, very loaded rifles. She threw herself across the room to where Sirius lay, bathing in a pool of his own blood. She knelt down next to him, staining the knees of her delicate lace dress red. She didn't care. She didn't care about the wife. Didn't care about the betrayal. About the lies. 

All she cared about was if his breath caught in his chest, if his heart began to beat a rum-tum-tum rhythm echoing her own, if his eyes, closed and guarded by a fringe of dark lashes, would ever again open, sucking up the world they inhabited like a child tasting his first milkshake, and if his lips…

If his lips ever found the strength to move again, be it in a kiss filled with tender pain, a joke, provoking a half smile on her own face or a lie, made too flattering sweet by her own desperation. 

He was the first man, no, the first person, that she had ever met who had appeared to give a damn about what happened to her. Not her ass, not her tits, not even her low smoky voice, or the way she tasted of rich black chocolate and cheap cigarettes. Just her. 

And even if that too was another sugary sweet lie, she couldn't let him die, for that one illusion, that single day of delusion had almost made her forget, forget the pain, the agony, and the endless cycle of men too many to remember and boys too young to touch. 

He was her catharsis, her Russian Roulette, and she didn't care if the two of them had shared meant nothing to him in return. For one single day he had meant everything to her. And so, even if it meant holding a loaded pistol to her head, she wasn't about to let him die. 

Let him die and have him shipped back to England where his fat wife could weep hysterically over his body moaning how terribly sorry she was that he was gone, when she didn't even have the brains to even begin to know the man whose surname she bore. She didn't have the right to mourn Sirius. Narcissa wasn't going to give the fat bitch that sadistic satisfaction.

"Sirius," Narcissa whispered, fitting her hand in-between his limp fingers. "Oh God… Sirius…" His hand coated hers with blood. The red liquid filled the rivers and valleys of her palm, that intense, unmistakable color causing her heart to scream silently in horror. Her breath lodged in her throat, and there was a queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach, because despite the blood, despite the gore, under her thumb, his pulse was still beating and as she stared at his inert form that slight movement seemed so false, so unnatural that she was overcome with a wave of revulsion. Death isn't easy to stare straight in the face, especially when it is accompanied by a pseudo-life, obstinately hanging onto the mortal world by a rapidly unraveling thread. 

Every new beat of his pulse sent a fresh wave of blood from the hole rent in his thigh. Shedding her squeamishness Narcissa put her hand upon the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding. She wasn't able to surpass a shudder of revulsion. It only took a moment before she realized that stanching Sirius's wound was like trying to swindle a goblin, an utterly futile task. Dzhugashvilli's bullet had done its job. 

And then, she felt a strong grip upon her arm and someone took her hand away, squeezing it so tightly that when he loosed his grip he had left ten black finger marks around the curvature of her wrist. 

Lucius.

Silently, he reached into his pocket. Narcissa heard the KGB guards tense behind her, but they visibly relaxed when he pulled out his wand. To Muggles it was just a thin stick of mahogany, varnished so dark it looked almost black. She felt a slight tingle of electricity when he passed it to her, but whether it was from the wand or the way his fingertips brushed gently against her skin like a light kiss, beautiful in its restraint, she wasn't sure. She didn't want to know. 

"The spell is _Asclepius_," he said, lowering his voice so that only she could hear. Narcissa was acutely aware of how he kept his eyes focused upon her face, trying not to look at Sirius's bloody body. 

She felt utterly confused and more helpless than Moses in the rushes. "What?" 

The flame of scorn flickered across his patrician features. "Say the spell," he said slowly as if he was addressing a very little girl. "And heal the Mudblood."

"But I've--" _never done magic before_. The words froze in her throat. Technically it was true. Narcissa had always known that she was a witch, but magic and the teachings of it had been banned in the USSR since the Stalin era. It was Josef Stalin who had first outlawed magic with the rational that it "disrupted the unity between magical beings and the common proletariat". This edict came right in the middle of the War with Germany, directly after Hitler's largely unsuccessful three-pronged attack on Leningrad, Moscow, and the oil fields of southern Russia. Stalin had the leaders of the now defunct RUM, _Ruski Urad od Magija_, or the Russian Bureau of Magic, deported as "enemies to the continuing revolution". He set up the now infamous SDE in its stead. The SDE was a puppet of the Secretary General, a hollow bureaucratic institution set up to "protect the wizards of Russia". In all actuality, all the SDE did was crack down on the use of magic, sending those who disobeyed the State's edict to the Gulags. Though many within the state lauded Stalin's ground breaking "reform", there were whispers that his motives may have been less than pure. Don't look so stunned, please! Even the best of leaders act politically now and again, and Stalin was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the noblest of men.

Hitler had long been enamoured with the occult and he allied himself with a Germanized-Turkish wizard known only as "Grindelwald". It was well known in the magical community that "the Turk", as he was derisively called by his many enemies, was gaining more and more sway over the German dictator every day. Due to the long-standing hatred between Turkey and Russia, Grindelwald urged Hitler to break diplomatic relations with Stalin and stab his one-time ally in the back. Looking for an excuse to sever ties with the USSR, and eager to gain access to the oil fields of Southern Russia to fuel his war machine, Hitler promptly complied. By outlawing magic in Russia, Stalin was sending a personal message to Grindelwald that his rash actions would not be forgiven. 

Interestingly enough, Stalin's aversion to wizardry did not extend to black magic. Rumor had it that he secretly fostered many black wizards in his lifetime, sponsoring them with state money under the provision that they develop new dark curses. One of the "innovators" he bankrolled was a quiet English man sometimes called Tom Riddle. Riddle's crowning achievement in Stalin's labs had been a triad of curses that, though lauded at the time of their invention, were in later years called by wizards the world over "unforgivable". 

Narcissa bit her lip, holding the unfamiliar wand in her hand. Although she had seem Zvana and Alexander perform spells many times before she had never herself held a wand before this moment and didn't have the slightest clue as how to go about using it. But she didn't feel that telling this to Lucius would be a wise move, especially under the current circumstances. She settled for a nice, non-specific: "I don't know how." 

His lips pursed together angrily. "The spell is _Asclepius,_" he repeated, an icy edge in his tone, cutting into and scarring her reluctance with the razor sharp blade of fear. 

"You do it!" She felt a wildfire of panic scorch through her entire body, stoked by Sirius's rapidly fading pulse and Lucius's equally weak patience. She thrust the wand wildly as Lucius like it carried a deadly disease.

"No," he looked at her coldly, gray eyes flashing daggers. 

"Please," she jabbed the wand towards him, feeling a bomb of pure panic explode at the bottom of her stomach, coating her entire body with adrenaline. "Please! Just do it!" 

"I won't," he repeated, a closed look in his stone-cold eyes. 

She was wild with terror now, for with every new second the thread holding Sirius to the world of the living was rapidly untwining. "You have to!"

"No." His hand was trembling. 

She pushed the wand towards him again, her voice rising into a shriek. "I don't know how! You must--"

"I can't!" He exploded, bringing his hand down upon the outstretched wand, so hard that it hit the concrete floor of the Roulette, causing Narcissa to grit her teeth in pain. His fingers closed around hers as he twisted her arm back towards her own body, staining her skin in the process with a haphazard smattering of black and blue. "I can't heal a mudblood," he said from between clenched teeth, his entire body as tense and rigid as the frozen skyscrapers of the urban wasteland outside. He exhaled; the air inside the Roulette was so cold that his breath froze white as soon as it left his mouth, drifting away into the never-ending expanse of air like a hero riding off into the sunset. "The spell is _Asclepius_," he said for the third time that night. 

She turned away from him, and pointed his wand at Sirius. Then she muttered the spell, more out of fear than any faith in her own abilities. 

Nothing happened. 

He grit his teeth and when he spoke it was with an air of great annoyance. "Its _Asc-LEP-ius_, you enunciated the first syllable." 

She was unable to tear her eyes away from Sirius's wound, fear and horror twisting a tourniquet about her heart. "Does it matter?" she whispered. 

"Yes, God dammit!" he roared, grabbing her arm and pointing it at Sirius. "Do you want to see him die or not?" 

She wrenched her hand away, a sudden feckless passion gripping her soul. "Why do you care about Sirius?"

He went suddenly quiet, teeth gritting together, the flame in his gray eyes growing dim, until it was a just mere glow, like old embers quietly burning themselves out after the fire is long gone. "I don't care about Black." 

"Then why are you trying to heal him? Why won't you let him die?" she hissed, all the anger and fear he had instilled in her since the moment they had first met, not twenty-four hours previous, pouring out in a horrendous quid pro quo. She was giving as she received. 

"Because," he said dangerously, his breath coming out in a low rasp. "If anyone is going to kill Sirius Black, it will be me." 

"You don't deserve that honor," she spat contemptuously, tossing his wand down on the hard concrete. It skittered across the floor to land at the base of his knees.

He reached forward and caught her, twisting her arm around and jerking her upwards so that she was forced to her knees, directly opposite him. Their legs were already pressing together but he pulled her closer still, the frantic beating of her heart betraying the fear her face, locked in a mask of anger, did not. He moved his head forward, his locks mingling with her silver curls until it was impossible to tell where one's hair ended and the other's began, so alike was their color. She tried to twist away, gripping the floor for leverage, but he caught her hand and held it fast, roughly entertaining his fingers against her own, pressing their palms into the frigid concrete. She let out a wild gasp as he jerked her arm again, twisting her so close that the veins on her neck stood out like the stems of two flowers, yet if he plucked these blooms, her blossom would wither away in an instant, gone forever, like a childhood dream. His childhood dreams. 

He could feel her breath: frigid upon his throat, its icy kisses ragged and uneven. The hot sweat sliding down her neckline to cling to his own chest contrasting sharply with the white puffs of frost they generated every time they spoke. "He should consider it an honor to be killed by me," Lucius whispered, in her ear, causing her to gasp involuntarily. "He doesn't deserve to occupy so many of my waking thoughts." 

"You're nothing," she spat vehemently, digging her nails into his hand; the sharp jolt of pain cause him to smile "nothing compared to him."

"Have you ever stopped to wonder," he said quickly, his voice simply a whisper. She leaned forward to hear him better, her soft cheek brushing accidentally against his own frigid skin, causing him to shudder. "That he doesn't love you." 

"That's not true," she said, their faces now on a parallel line, ear to ear, so not one could see the other, but only hear their voice and fell the touch of their skin. 

"He's married," he said harshly. 

"I know," she replied, an easy lie on the tip of her tongue. "He told me, he loves me more than her--"

"You're a fool," he hissed. She could feel the movements of his jaw against the side of her own face, making his words a visceral experience. 

"Aren't we all?" she whispered back, instinctively leaning closer towards him. 

He jerked away. Spinning around on his knees, he gripped the sides of her arms and pulled her towards him until they were once again sitting forehead to forehead and it was impossible for either of them to get away from the other. From the place where his fingers rested inside the crook of her arm, he could feel the slight beat of her pulse, fluttering like a butterfly kiss. "Don't generalize," he snapped. She took a deep breath and inhaled a mouthful of his stale air. "Generalizations are the mantras of weaklings. They pin responsibility upon man _en masse_ instead of the individual, where it belongs." 

"That's horrible," she whispered back, anger replaced with deadened disgust. 

"Truth is horrible," was his reply as a long shadow fell over them both. Narcissa heard the click of a rifle. 

From somewhere far above, a KGB agent declared: "You're under arrest."

Instead of the adrenaline rush she had always imagined she would experience if she ever found herself in such a situation, Narcissa found the whole affair very anticlimactic. In fact, she only had time to feel mildly dazed before the butt of a gun slammed into the flat of her skull. 

It was a matter of seconds before Lucius lay beside her. Their fingers were still intertwined, palms stained red with Sirius's blood.

----

The gunfire ricocheted off of the side of the tenement house; a spray fan of concrete spitting out of the tiny pin sized bullet hole. "Get down! God dammit, get down!" Miriken yelled, pushing James up against the side of the building. His boots slid wildly on the snow as he slammed back first into the hard concrete wall. From far above them, another bullet hit the window of the apartment building. The glass shattered, scattering the snow with razor-sharp shards. 

James bit his lip so hard it began to bleed. 

"Fuck," Miriken spoke for both of them as his eyes darted in the direction of the gunfire. Dzhugashvilli could not be far behind. Roughly letting go of James's throat, Miriken tossed the gun, which he had been holding in his left hand, to his right. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a handful of bullets in the same movement. Quickly but methodically, he flicked the hitherto empty weapon open and began to slide the bullets in. 

"You held me up with and empty gun?" James whispered, tasting the acrid blood in his mouth. 

Miriken didn't look up from his weapon to reply. "You didn't call my bluff." 

A bullet whizzed past Miriken's ear, burying itself in the cement just above his left shoulder. "Go," he said tersely, jerking his head down the street, and away from Dzhugashvilli's deadly fire. 

James didn't need to be told twice, though Miriken gripped him roughly by the shoulder and pushed him into a sprint. He was all too eager to oblige, adrenaline-addled reason telling him to get as far away from the shooting as possible. 

His blood had frozen on his chin. 

A shot echoed much closer to them. Miriken had finally managed to load his weapon, and was returning Dzhugashvilli's bullets with a volley of his own. 

The prisoner's challenge was echoed by his former captor as the street lamp beside James exploded in a shower of broken glass and extinguished light. 

From somewhere behind him, James could hear Miriken's wild shout, "Go!" He didn't need the extra incentive, utterly determined to find a way out of this city of flying bullets and equally deadly promises, a hell that had indeed frozen over. Reaching the corner of the street, James halted, stopped like a deer caught in the headlights. He slipped on the ice. As he fell forward, his hands hit the freezing slush, sending shots of biting cold into the soft flesh of his palms. He spun around uncontrollably on his stomach, eyes traveling to the end of the street, to momentarily rest upon the unmistakable silhouette of Josef Dzhugashvilli. 

James felt Miriken grab him roughly by the back of his collar, wrenching him off of his belly. "Piss in your pants later--"

Taking advantage of their stationary state, the older man bent forward to shoot over James's shoulder. The noise of the explosion almost deafened Prongs, causing his ears to ring madly as his head spun in a tarantella of terror. 

James saw the shadowy figure of Dzhugashvilli duck, and then continue to run. 

"I'm rusty," Miriken said flatly, pushing James roughly to his feet. He didn't stop to look at Prongs, for his eyes never strayed from the dogged figure at the end of the street, who grew closer with every new stride of his legs. Not wanting to tempt a hitherto unfriendly fate, Prongs leapt over the curb, tripping slightly in the gutter. He would have fallen again if it hasn't been for Miriken, holding him up with a quick steadying hand. 

"Now run," the other man whispered. 

And run is what they did-- feet crunching through the snow, the dread silence of the Moscow night periodically shattered by the loud crack of Dzhugashvilli's gun and Miriken's reply and James found himself counting the bullets until he realized that it was impossible as the number of gunshots climbed and soared until it seemed as if the entire world was firing back and forth and forth and back as their feet hit the ice and the shit hit the fan and the deathly night silence sang the requiem for a bespectacled boy—

All he had wanted was an assignment. 

All he had wanted was some glory. 

All he wanted was to get the fuck home alive—

"Down!" Miriken threw himself around a corner as Dzhugashvilli's latest token of appreciation smashed into the wall of the building beside them, burying itself in rock-hard cement. 

That was intended for you, Jimmy boy. And the human body cracks a lot easier than stone. 

He exhaled, the frozen breath in the air and the frozen blood upon his chin, rude evidence leading him to the incomprehensible conclusion that he was still alive. But for all practical, intrinsic purposes, he was a dead man walking. Because if Dzhugashvilli didn't kill him, Miriken would. 

"Up!" Miriken yelled, reaching upwards as he spoke. Despite his apparent age, James's former "informant" easily pulled his body up onto an old wrought iron fire escape that had been dangling mere feet above their heads. He reached down for James's hand, to aid him up. 

James didn't take the other man's offer. Gripping the escape with both hands and trying to ignore how the bitter cold metal burnt swaths of ice into his palm, he swung his body upwards, feet skittering along the small meter by meter metal landing. He lay there for a second flat on his stomach, cheek pressed against the cold grating before Miriken gripped him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him to his feet. "I don't have time for you to assert your independence, not when _my_ life is on the line," he hissed, spitting on the metal grating. 

His spittle was frozen before it hit the ground. 

And then, they began to climb, feet pounding against the ricochet frame of the fire escape, which was swinging precariously back and forth. Instead of being attached to the building by thick strips of metal it was suspended by chains, creating an altogether bumpy ascent. And James's heart could hardly take more trauma. 

From far below, Dzhugashvilli pulled himself up onto the fire escape, adding his two feet to the rhapsody of flight beat out upon the creaking metal of the old staircase. 

"Jump across," Miriken utilized one of the many one-word commands he was so fond of, pointing towards the roof of an adjacent tenement house. 

"What?" James was utterly dumbfounded. They had reached the top of the fire escape, and Dzhugashvilli was still a mere moment behind. The roof of the nearest building was a good five feet away and the ice coating the side of both apartment blocks did not make for optimal traction. 

Miriken surprised James by turning to stare him in the eye. "Do you trust me?" 

"Absolutely not," James said, gazing at the older man with ill-disguised confusion in his gaze. James had never been any good at masking him emotions. 

"Start," Miriken commanded, pushing Prongs towards the edge of their roof. Gritting his teeth, James jumped. 

It was one moment of sheer terror, suspended in midair over an asphalt street that he could easily be seeing pressed up against his insides in two seconds flat.

And then he hit the ice on the roof of the other building and for the first second he wasn't quite sure if he had made it but the smile on Miriken's face confirmed his worst suspicions and he realized with an alarming shock that he was alive and if he wished to remain so he had better pick himself up out of the snow and high-tail it out of Moscow. But something froze him in mid-sprint, causing him to forcibly turn around and watch the old man with the gun, once known as Vladimir Ulyanov, called Alexander Miriken, but in all actuality, just a mystery. 

Miriken remained on the other rooftop; his gun leveled at the fire escape. But instead of aiming towards Dzhugashvilli, who was about halfway up the side of the building, he shot at the chains holding the metal staircase to the apartment building. 

BANG! 

One chain snapped, folding in upon itself with the crack of a whip. The staircase gave an almighty lurch, swinging from its wall like a wounded piñata. 

BANG!

Another chain sprung free. As Miriken stopped to slip one more bullet into his gun, the fire escape swung away from the tenement house, slamming against the side of James's building with a horrendous nails-on-the-blackboard-screech accompanied by a whirlybird shower of sparks worth of Guy Fawkes Day. 

BANG! 

The third and final chain popped out of its socket and with a horrible groan the fire-escape fell, smashing into the street with a corpse-waking clang as iron met snow and the two became one. 

There was a smaller, more immediate noise and looking up from the wreckage on the street below, James was amazed to see Miriken standing beside him, looking as cool and unfazed as a mild-mannered cucumber. 

The man didn't say a word. But in all truth, he didn't really need to. His deeds spoke for themselves. Later, James found himself unable to remember much else. He vaguely recalled Miriken leading him to a small overhang on the far side of the roof, underneath which was a sliding metal door with an enormous metal padlock on it. 

Calmly, Miriken shot the lock off of the door. Amazingly, ice or no, the portal yielded to his touch and slid open like it had been greased with butter. 

"After you," Miriken said, gesturing towards the gaping hole. James couldn't make out what was at the bottom though a soft glow of warm light radiated up at him. And that was preferable to this bitter winter hell. 

He jumped. 

James found himself in a laundry chute of shorts, falling forward at a terrifically alarming rate. He shut his eyes, bit his still bloody lip, and realized that this is how a bullet must feel trapped in the barrel of a gun, but he hoped like so many of the shots fired that night, he would not find his end buried feet deep in a cement wall. 

Instead, he landed face first into a mahogany table, scattering paperwork all around him. 

Miriken was a mere second behind, but of course, James noted with dull resentment, he managed to land on his feet. 

Feeling rather dazed, James picked his head up off of the table to gaze around. 

He found himself staring into the shrewd black eyes of Alastor Moody. But Moody's calculating gaze was not directed towards James. Instead, his eyes were focused on Alexander Miriken, gun still smoking in his grip. 

"You're late," the Auror hissed, glancing at the burnished brass pocket-watch he held in his hand. 

Miriken didn't waste a breath. "No," he corrected smoothly. "Your watch is fast." 

----

****

A/N: Thanks to all that reviewed—I really couldn't have made it through writing this without all of your commentary. Thank you, thank you, thank you :)!!!! 

I apologize to all those profusely whom I offended, be them Russian or not, and I thank those of you out there with a much greater knowledge of Soviet history than myself for your kind corrections. In all actuality, this fic is more historical fantasy than historical fiction. I'm taking great dramatic license with the few facts that I know. I'm just a high school student with only rudimentary (if even) knowledge of Russia.

****

UP NEXT: Ilona makes a reappearance as flashbacks abound! James finally gets a clue while Sirius, Narcissa, and Lucius find themselves all tied up. Literally. Barring any more plays (which is what caused this chapter's delay), this one won't take me six months to write :). 

****

MORE A/N: Squicked by Ilona? Loving Luicus? Hate the fic so much you want me to play Russian Roulette? Despise it, love it, or think it's just ok, please leave me a review to let me know about your feelings. Criticism is always appreciated (though I don't say no to the occasional compliment :) ). 


	5. Three of a Kind

**Title: **Russian Roulette Chapter 4—Three of a Kind 

**Author Name: **Soz 

**Author Email:** actriz_k@yahoo.com 

**Category:** Romance/Angst 

**Keywords:** Lucius, Sirius, Narcissa, James, MWPP 

**Spoilers:** all the books 

**Rating:** R 

**Summary:** Sirius/Narcissa/Lucius triangle stretching from the illegal disco dance clubs of Communist-controlled Moscow to the bullrings of Southern Spain. Find what made and broke Sirius Black before he set foot in Azkaban. 

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.  More disclaiming appears at the end of this chapter as not to spoil the story itself.  

**Author's Note:** Dedicated to CLS (without you, this would be a veritable bog of SPAG errors :) ) and Katja (who single-handedly saved Lucius's past from being a bad _Lord of the Flies rip off)—my two splendiferous betas.  There is no way under the sun I could have gotten this out without the both of you—not only for your insightful comments on the story, but on the encouragement you both give in general.  I can't thank you enough.  Also, the poker scene within is not the cut and dry rules—in fact, it's a rather convoluted version of the five-card draw, doctored to suit the flow of the story.  I apologize to all you card sharks out there._

**Previously on Russian Roulette (just because it has been six months): _James and Sirius, low-ranking Aurors, travel to __Russia__ under the order of James's father, the Minister of Magic, who has ordered them to uncover a worldwide-Communist-Death-Eater conspiracy.  Unbeknownst to our heroes, James's father has sent them without informing Alastor Moody, Head of the Auror Bureau (who is rather pissed when he discovers they are gone).  Once in __Moscow__, James and Sirius meet up with the mysterious Vladimir Ulyanov, who claims to be working for the Ministry, but seems to have a hidden agenda of his own.  He takes our heroes to the Russian Roulette, an illegal disco nightclub, where Sirius meets Narcissa, a whore who is also being used by Lucius Malfoy (in __Moscow__ to carry through a diabolical scheme that blows up in his face).  On one of their outings, Malfoy and Narcissa meet up with Ilona, Lucius's tango-dancing chain-smoking sister who seems nearly as screwed up as he is.  Eventually, thorough a series of plot twists, it is revealed that Sirius is married and Ulyanov  turns out to be two-for-the-price-of-one, the Sad Clown, an infamous terrorist who has been bombing buildings all over Moscow for a number of years and Alexander Miriken—an ex-convict who has been assumed dead.  Ulyanov/Miriken is cornered in the Russian Roulette (with the rest of the cast, sans Ilona, Moody, and James's father) by Josef Dzhugashvilli, a KGB agent whose hatred for him amounts to an obsession.  Miriken manages to escape with James as a hostage, but Sirius is shot in the leg during all the brouhaha.  He, Narcissa, and Lucius are arrested by the KGB, while Miriken (dragging James behind him) manages to evade capture—jumping down a ventilation chute onto the desk of Alastor Moody.  _**

RUSSIAN ROULETTE 4

Three of a Kind

The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal.  Even the scarlet flowers of passion grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.  

—Oscar Wilde, _The Portrait of Mr. W.H._

December 31, 1995

Moscow, Russia

"Hallo, Sirius."  

Narcissa's voice was light, little more than the shadow of a whisper.  Hearing it now, after all this time, caused the rolling, boiling, coursing tidal wave of his fury, which had been gathering strength ever since he had beheld her face earlier that evening, to fall and crash upon the wide shoreline of his sentient mind, splattering away into foamy flecks of bewilderment and confusion.  He could not make himself strike her, yet he balled his hand into a fist anyway, slamming it against the iron doorjamb.  She didn't even react, simply standing in the deserted alleyway, her pale eyes luminescent in the dim light seeping out from the interior of the Russian Roulette.  He wished that he could look into the mind hidden behind her cold gaze and her high breadth of forehead, reading her thoughts, dispelling the fear and doubt that hung about him like a suffocating Lethifold; but telepathy was all but impossible, even for a skilled wizard like himself.  She was giving him no clues to help him along his way, standing in the dim club light as if she were chipped of ice.  Then again, she had never been overly demonstrative.  Even back in the winter of '79 he had never really known what she was thinking.  

Maybe that was why his memories of her lingered while those of other girls faded away into the backdrop of his subconscious.  Perhaps it was Narcissa's aura of mystery that had kept her alive for him during those twelve years in Azkaban when so much of the world had grown cold—dead.  Now, even in her current stasis, there was still an esoteric, enigmatical element to her, visible in the curve of her lip, the set of her jaw, and the way her hair hovered about her head, the silver curls like a delicate cloud of ethereal smoke.  

Yet his conscious mind knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was nothing especially remarkable about her at all; she was just a poor girl who had been born on the Moscow streets and, until the winter of 1979, seemed destined to die within their gray confines.  

Then she had met Lucius Malfoy.  

The thought of Malfoy brought reality back to Sirius with a smash.  He knew, as he had known all along, the real reason that the memory of Narcissa lingered long after those of his other affairs dissipated.  Ultimately, she had rejected him, choosing, in his stead, the man who hated him with vehemence surpassing even Snape's.  

In Azkaban, he had had a lot of time to ponder.  Sirius thought often on whether or not Malfoy had actually loved Narcissa, or had instead married her on a whim.  He finally concluded neither of these things.  Malfoy's true motive for taking Narcissa in, giving her his name and his legitimacy, had been to exact revenge upon Sirius himself.    It was obvious to Sirius that Malfoy's desire for Narcissa was synonymous with his lust for vengeance; he married her not for her beauty, not for her companionship, and definitely not for her love.  Narcissa was Malfoy's object for retribution, and nothing more.  The sad thing was that Lucius Malfoy was the best thing that ever happened to Narcissa Vabka; considering her options, she was better off being used thus than she would have been in any other situation; and that truth stuck a knife through Sirius's heart.  At least his charity would have been sincere, given to Narcissa for her own sake and not out of a twisted desire for revenge a la Lucius.  But if he wanted to sit down, throw all the cards on the table and be perfectly honest with himself Sirius knew, despite all of his best intentions, he couldn't offer Narcissa half of the comfort and security Malfoy, by virtue of his wealth and position, bestowed upon her without so much as a second thought.   

Sirius had been given a chance at love once, not sweaty one-night love, stolen in the back room of some smoky saloon, forgotten as soon as the taste of the last kiss grows bland upon the mouth, but real lasting love, awakening beside you each morning with a smile and tucking you in at night with a kiss—love as comforting as a warm fire on a rainy day—love that burns with contained, cozy ardor—love that would never splutter away into ashes.  Yet neither he nor she had been lovers of the fireplace sort.  Their romance had leapt instantaneously from the grate to consume any chance they had at a relationship from the foundations up, leaving naught but the smoking remains.  

Azkaban had given Sirius a lot of time to dwell on what-ifs, and although his adolescent naïveté had faded with age, he still believed that he could have given up the sweaty trysts and the stolen kisses for her sake—for her sake he would have regulated himself to a fireplace romance.  She just wouldn't give up her hedonistic life for him.  She was a raging inferno waiting to burn somebody.  What hurt Sirius the most was that she didn't set out to wound him specifically.  Their whirlwind meeting, marriage, and dissociation were not planned, calculated, or fated; it was pure happenstance.  H was just in the right place at the wrong time.  She could have just as easily married the next bloke at the subsequent bar or even the one after that, because in her longtime paradigm he, or any of her hypothetical husbands, meant nothing.  She had humored him; he was no more than her distraction, her amusement, her whore.  

But her fleeting interest had made more of an impact upon him that the genuine emotion that so many women had expressed over the years.  Sirius had had a lot of time to think in Azkaban.  And he still couldn't figure out why.    

Narcissa was waiting for him to speak.  Of course, she gave none of the usual body signs:  sighing impatiently, crossing her arms or tapping her foot.  It was the very stillness of her body that radiated expectation.  He turned his eyes from his fruitless past to gaze at her full on.  Her stasis, which had been utterly indecipherable to him a moment earlier, now seemed to cry, "Speak to me!  Wake me from this trance!  Free me from this prison!"  Maybe he was reading into her silence, but, Sirius told himself, life is full of maybes—and to get anywhere, especially after twelve years had been robbed from him, they must be ignored.  

But resolving to act and the actual doing are two entirely different things.  Although he had played this situation out in his cell countless times, meeting her alone after all these years was a thousand times more overwhelming in reality than it has even been in his desperate fantasies.  In his imaginings, he always knew that everything would turn out all right in the end.  That reassurance was lacking in the real world, so he found himself speechless, unable to dredge up the words to break the spell, to wake his sleeping beauty from her trance, to free her from her prison.  When he next heard words it took him a moment to realize that they came from her lips instead of his.  The wrongness of it stung him like a slap in the face.  "I'm leaving."  

Her declaration left him with a bitter sense of nausea; this wasn't the way it was supposed to happen.  He would speak first and his magic words, his mythic words would somehow break the barrier standing strong between them, reconciling the fifteen years and the old wounds that separated them like oil and water.  He would win her back; she would swoon into his arms and Malfoy would shake his fist but he would be powerless to do anything because in Sirius's fantasies Lucius Malfoy had as much authority as a common garden slug.  

"I'm leaving," she repeated, moving towards the door.  There was a hint of urgency in her voice.  "Do you hear me, Sirius?  I'm leaving."  

_Sirius; after all these years she still said that word the same way.  It was a discordant mixture of desperation and hope, a pessimistic expectation:  anticipating the best in spite of itself.  Her sudden use of his Christian name woke him from his trance, freed him from his prison of inaction.  _

Do you hear me, Sirius?  I'm leaving.  

If she was really leaving, why did she need to tell him three times?  Unless she didn't really want to go at all, unless what she was really stating was "Say something, _Sirius.  Keep me here, __Sirius.  I beg you, __Sirius, make me stay."  Her forceful statement wasn't an ultimatum; it was a plea.  Sirius had lost twelve years of his life.  He was no longer a young man.  He couldn't afford to live in maybes anymore.  His gut instincts were telling him that she wanted to be swept off her feet, wanted past wrongs to be reconciled, wanted Lucius Malfoy to be reduced to a common garden slug.  She was stalling, and in stalling giving him one more chance.  _

His last chance.  

"I'm leaving, Sirius," she repeated, the annoyance in her words not extending to her eyes as she reached for the door leading back into the club.  

He reached forward, slamming the door on the Russian Roulette, blocking her unwilling escape back into comfortable servitude.  "No Narcissa," he said quietly.  "You're not."  

Her reply was surprisingly harsh.  "What do you want with me?"  

"To finish what we started."  

She crossed her arms over her chest, and whether it was because of the cold or on account of inner tension, Sirius couldn't tell.  "That was over fifteen years ago."  

"Maybe for you," he snapped, taking a step closer to her.  The palpable bitterness in his tone nipped any possible reconciliation in the bud.  "You didn't lose twelve years of your life."  

Her jaw tensed.  "Don't try to make me feel guilty for something I had no control over."

"I'm just saying that our last fifteen years aren't comparable," he said, taking a step towards her.  She turned her head away.  "You've spent yours in a palace, living easily, house elves at your beck and call.  You have a _loving husband," Sirius sneered, "a son—"_

"Don't bring Draco into this," she said, with surprising vehemence.  

So the brat's name was Draco.  Sirius wondered briefly if he looked like Lucius or Narcissa before realizing that it didn't really matter.  The resemblance between the boy's parents was so great they could have easily been brother and sister.  "While you've been doting over _Draco," he twisted the name into an explicative, ingraining it with every inch of his own hate, pain, and frustration—not directed so much at the boy he had never encountered as the idea of the child, a bastard combination of two halves that should have never met:  west and east, rich and poor, innocence and experience—all cumulating in the horribly mismatched Narcissa and Lucius.  The child was the physical embodiment of Sirius's biggest mistake, a constant remembrance of the life he had let slip through his fingers._

The boy should have been his son.  

"While you were doting over Draco," he repeated, noticing her flinch when he mentioned the brat's name.  "I was trapped in Azkaban with no family, no house elves, only my memories for company.  Do you know who I thought of?" he whispered, tone strung tight with angry resentment.  Without waiting for her reply he continued, "I thought of you, Narcissa."  

Her voice was quiet.  "You're living in the past."    
 

He ignored her.  "I used to play this meeting out in my head, scripting what I'd say to you and how you'd reply.  I had the ending all worked out; it was just what we said in the interim that always gave me trouble."  

"Maybe the trouble is that there's nothing to say."  

"I used to think that if I would see you just one more time, I would be able to make you understand—"

"I understand everything," she countered angrily, "or at least enough to see that everything else you have to say is just another lie because—"

"Because if I could see you one more time I knew I would be able to make you understand that I meant you no harm."  

"It matters little whether you meant it or not," she said, her cold words turned to ice by the frigid Moscow air.  

"What happened to you?" he broke off from his quasi-scripted speech, staring at her with an expression of confused disgust.  "What has he done to you?"  

"Maybe I was like this all along," she said, her pale face stained red by the merciless cold.  "You never took the time to notice."  

"I cared about you," he snapped, furious to be on the defensive when it was so blatantly obvious that he was the wounded party.  He hadn't left her stranded in the snow, with only the empty wind for company.  

"Yes you cared about me, in the same way you might care about one of your dogs or your damned bike.  I was something for you to have, something for you to play with," she replied viciously.  "Within a week you would have seen a new blonde at another bar and I would have lost my novelty, my appeal."  

"Did he tell you this?"  Sirius cut in, infuriated by her accusations.  "It's one of his lies—"

"You never took the time to get to know me," she cut him off.  

"You never gave me the chance!" he exploded.  "One moment we were together and the next Malfoy—"

"What would you have me do?" she snapped, her voice full of uncharacteristic sarcasm.  "Marry you instead?"

 ----

January 2, 1980

Moscow, USSR

"You're late," Moody hissed, glancing at the brass plated pocket watch he held in his hand.  

Miriken didn't waste a breath.  "No," he corrected smoothly.  "Your watch is fast."  

In his surprise, James lost all trace of propriety, completely forgetting that Moody, Head of the Auror Bureau, was his direct superior.  "What are you doing here?" he asked, nothing short of dumbfounded.  

Moody ignored him.  "Were you given any chase?" he asked hastily, eyes never wavering from Miriken.  

"A Muggle," the doctor answered smoothly, still standing in the middle of Moody's paperwork as if he was king of the hill.  "No one of any importance.  Unfortunately," Miriken continued, "the Sad Clown operation has been compromised."  

Moody's only outward sign of tension was a slight contraction of the eyebrows, "You know that it is not my primary concern, Alexander.  You have to take that up with the DWA."  

"Will that be possible?" Miriken asked sharply.  

"Imminently possible," Moody replied.  "I just received an owl from one of them.  We can be expecting him at any moment."  

"Or so he says," Miriken sneered, sounding more like his familiar sniping self than the mysterious, and as the run in with Dzhugashvilli on the stairs had demonstrated, dangerous doctor.  James felt strangely comforted.  "You can never tell with those Yanks."  

"Yank or not, I have always been able to rely on Robert Laurence," Moody chastened Miriken.  

The doctor raised an eyebrow.  "The kid?"  

"The kid," Moody said, a touch of amusement in his voice, stemming, no doubt, from Miriken's moniker, "delivers your checks." 

"I have never paid much notice to messenger boys," Miriken said haughtily.  

For some inexplicable reason, this made Moody smile.  "If only I had done the same at Belsen."  

Miriken shrugged, "That was different."  

"No," Moody replied, still smiling paternally, "I don't think it is, or at least not different in the way that you mean.  Robert Laurence is less of an errand boy than you were."  

Miriken crossed his arms over his chest, gun still dangling from his fingers.  "I fail to grasp the relevance of this conversation."  

"Meaning?"  

"Other than a convoluted nostalgia trip, what is your point?"  

"You tell me, Alexander."  

Miriken smirked like a precocious child, "You don't have one."  

"Maybe," Moody said, but his grin had vanished, Miriken's comments bringing him back to the here and now.  "Did the boy give you trouble?"  

"Of course the boy gave me trouble."  It was only when Miriken glanced down at him that James realized that he was the current topic of discussion.  "His friend had the sense to tell me that he was the Minister's son, as opposed to Mr. Potter here, and I played along in order to throw Malfoy off the scent.  There was only so much, however, that I could do to protect Potter and he didn't make it any easier for me."  

"Wait," James interrupted, glancing up at Miriken.  "You were trying to protect me?"  He turned to Moody, face flushed with anger.  "You can't possibly believe him, he's lying—he's a terrorist, a bomber, an escaped convict, and I'm more than a hundred percent sure that he is at the root of the worldwide Communist-Death-Eater conspiracy.  He's done nothing but cause trouble for me and Sirius ever since we arrived, not five minutes ago he kidnapped me from an underground, and mind you, illegal club that he single-handedly ran—"  

"Potter!" Moody snapped as Miriken smirked, radiating smug amusement.  "Will you desist?"  

James, taken aback at being reprimanded when it was so painfully obvious that Miriken was the guilty party was unable to restrain himself.  "What are you doing here?" James repeated his question, voice colored red by indignant anger. 

"I could ask the same of you, Potter," Moody snapped, tearing his eyes away from Miriken, who had leapt easily off the desk and slid into a seat on the Auror's left side.  The Russian placed his now-loaded gun on the boards in front of him, excruciatingly visible to James from his perch atop the table.  "You are here in Moscow," Moody said, drawing Prongs's gaze back to him, "without my sanction."  

"I'm following my father's orders," James protested.  

"Your father," Moody sneered, his words dripping with scorn, "has no authority over _my department."  _

"My father," James snapped, hardly believing Moody's audacity, "is the Minister of Magic."  

"And the Minister of Magic has no right to meddle in the affairs of the Auror Bureau."  

Under any other circumstances, James would have acquiesced to Moody.  But the Auror's behavior was utterly irrational and he felt it his duty to defend the family honor.  "My father has the right to do whatever he bloody well pleases!"  James yelled, his boyish face red and splotchy with anger.  As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized that he probably shouldn't have said them, for politeness' sake if not because of his career.  However, the Auror chief was insulting his father so he felt that he possessed adequate justification for loosing his temper.  No one talked down on a Potter.  

"Contrary to your belief, Potter," Moody sneered, his voice coated with patronizing disgust, "your family does not have a divine right to rule and your father has no business meddling in my affairs."  

"He just wanted to send the best people for the job," James said icily.  Moody was being utterly irrational, refusing to bend to the will of his superior, the Minister of Magic.  The old man was taking the entire affair far too personally.  As soon as James got home he would recommend that Moody be removed from his post as Head of the Auror Bureau.  The man was obviously unable to differentiate between his own emotions and the good of the Ministry.  Besides, the Auror was getting old.  It was common knowledge that he was well into his second century and in James's opinion, a textbook example of the old adage: "By 122, it's all down the loo."  This applied to every older wizard James knew, with the obvious anomaly of Albus Dumbledore.  Then again, Dumbledore had always been an exception to the rule.    

"If your father truly wished to find the best person for the job," Moody said condescendingly, "he should have spoken with me and I would have been more than happy to direct him to someone remotely qualified."  James was livid.  Bright red, James opened his mouth to protest at this unprovoked insult, but Moody cut him off with a well-placed command.  "Get off your stomach, Potter and sit down," he gestured to his right where there was an empty seat.  "Shut your mouth and try to be as little of a nuisance as possible."  

Silently fuming, James did as he was told.  

"Now, how much does the boy know?" Moody asked Miriken, barely glancing at his young underling.  

"Everything," Miriken said easily, smiling nastily at James as he fiddled with his gun suggestively.  "I tried to tell him last night, but he didn't believe a word, so I wiped his memory."  

"You did no such thing!" James spat, fighting the animal urge to lunge across the table in a fit of rage.  The only thing that held him back was that he couldn't decide whom to leap at first, Moody or Miriken.  

"Shhh."  Moody waved a hand at James, not even bothering to turn around and glance at him.  "Oblivate is a dangerous curse, Alexander."  

Miriken shrugged, acquiescing to Moody.  "Under normal circumstances yes, but he threatened to go to his father."  

Moody spun around, eyes boring holes into James.  "Did you, Potter?" he asked.  His tone could only be described as excruciatingly exasperated.  It was obviously a rhetorical question.  

James chose to answer anyway.  "How should I know?" his gaze snapped to Miriken, voice sounding very much like a spoilt child.  "I don't _remember."  _

"Jesus Christ," Moody growled, rounding on James.  "Will you keep your mouth closed except in the extremely unlikely event that you have something useful to add?" with that, he turned back to Miriken, an angry set to his aged shoulders.  

James had taken enough.  "No!"  Both men turned around, a look of furious shock on Moody's face while condescending amusement colored Miriken's features.  Moody opened his mouth to undoubtedly reprimand his underling, but James wasn't about to let him get a word in.  "No!" he repeated, his voice rising to an unnaturally loud roar.  "No I will _not sit down and be quiet like a good little boy; and __no, for the love of God, I will __not shut up.  You," he pointed viciously at Miriken, almost knocking over the table in the process, "wiped my memory, drugged me with poisoned vodka, and held me up with an empty gun—if that wasn't enough, you dragged me through the street—not only was it twenty bloody degrees below zero, which would have caused sufficient angst for me, thank you very much, we were shot at all the way!  I can't believe that you're spouting off some cock-and-bull story about trying to protect me, at least give us a plausible lie.  I could have easily been killed multiple times thanks to you.  And now you're sitting here calmly while he," he gestured wildly at Moody, "tells me to shut up?  I don't think so!  And you," he rounded on the Auror chief, "have done nothing but insult me and my family since I arrived here—against my will, might I add," he snapped with a furious glance at Miriken.  "I wouldn't be either of you as soon as we're back in England, you could offer me the world, but that won't stop me from personally making sure that the both of you take an involuntary leave of absence involving the words 'Azkaban' and 'extended stay'.  Your treatment of me has been nothing short of abhorrent from the moment I first set foot in Moscow and I demand," James heaved a breath as he had been taking very fast and very loud and was in dire need of air, "to know what the hell is going on, or I will be serving both of your heads to my father of a silver platter!"  _

There was a dead silence.  

There was another.  

And a third.  

Outside their window, a siren whooshed into and then out of earshot, heralding the arrival of a forth void of quiet.  

And then Miriken began to clap, a slightly amused smile on his face.  James couldn't decide if the Russian was mocking him or was actually impressed by his tantrum.  He guessed the former.  Still, a goofy smile crept its way onto his face, lighting up his features that had been contorted in anger mere seconds before.  It felt good to get that all out.  

When Moody spoke, his voice was barely louder than the softest of whispers, but it held all the ferocity of a mad dog's growl.  "Don't you ever speak to me like that again, Potter.  Now sit down, shut your mouth, and do not speak even if you're spoken to, or I will be having _your head on a silver platter with relish and a little sliver of lemon.  It's almost midnight and I'm extremely hungry as I haven't yet had dinner.  Do you know why, Potter?"  Without waiting for James's reply he pressed on.  "I've been too busy worrying about your well being, which I can assure you, is not my favorite pastime."  _

James felt cheated.  "But—"

"Sit!" Moody's voice rose to a roar.  

James sat.  

"Sorry I'm late," a voice rang out from behind James as the door to the room clicked shut, heralding the arrival of a third man.  "I was held up by a group of Muggle police men.  They're swarming around the streets like flies, searching for an escaped convict named Miriken.  I told them," the man said, shooting a knowing smirk in the direction of Vladimir Ulyanov, "that I had no idea who they were referring to."  

Miriken said nothing, his lips curving upwards, matching the newcomer's almost-smile.  It was obvious to James that these two were old acquaintances and had probably dealt with each other in the past.   Knowing Miriken, these dealings had more than likely been despicably underhand, such as smuggling cocaine from darkest Tegucigalpa disguised as baby dolls or stealing nuns out of Franciscan monasteries to sell as slave labor in the southern sections of Burkina Faso.  Due to such hypotheses, James was not particularly inclined to welcome the visitor with open arms, but drug runner or not, he still had to be better than Moody.  

"Laurence, this is James Potter.  We've discussed James, you remember?"  There was still an underlying current of anger in Moody's voice, but he was obviously trying to but on his best face for the newcomer.  

"Yes, I remember Potter." Laurence extended a hand.  

James was disinclined to take it, considering the fact that this was apparently a friend of Moody's and thus his enemy by default, but he knew better than to air his dirty laundry in front of a stranger.  "James Potter," he said, taking Laurence's hand.  Sirius has always told James that you could tell a great deal about a person by the feel of their handshake.  Although he had initially written off Padfoot's tip as idle blather, the handshake had, over the years, become one of the first things he noticed about a person.  Laurence's grip was surprisingly firm, a sharp contrast to his relaxed manner and easy smile, which held none of Moody's fierce anger or Miriken's calculating manipulation.  The newcomer sported a head of russet brown hair, curling up at the edges to frame his boyish face.  By James's estimation, Laurence couldn't be more than thirty-five, but he held his own around Miriken and Moody, who treated him like an equal.  James was more than a little annoyed.  "Pleasure to meet you," James said, lying a bit, but all for the sake of politeness.   

"Likewise," Laurence replied.  He spoke with the long drawling lilt of an American, drawing out his words as if they had no end, thus taking an obscenely long time to say what a normal person could get out in a matter of seconds.  James couldn't stand American accents.  

The fact that Laurence spoke with such an inflection surprised him, for the British Ministry of Magic hadn't had any ties to its American counterpart, the Department of Wizarding Affairs, since the early 1970s.  In fact, barring any (unlikely) lapses in his memory, James could have sworn that the International Confederation of Wizards had gone as far as to enact economic sanctions against the DWA, outlawing the importation and exportation of goods and services into Wizarding America.  

Quodpot fans all over the world were crushed.  

Although the DWA had done everything in its power to appease the International Confederation of Wizards in hopes that the sanctions would be lifted, the ICW had not relented, and in James's opinion, rightfully so.  The fact that the Head of the Auror Bureau was associating with an American when they were the pariahs of the international wizarding community was more than a bit unnerving, although, James thought with a malicious glance at his superior, like Miriken, Moody wasn't above drug running.    

"I'm Robert Laurence," the American said, rudely breaking into James's thoughts with a broad grin that he was wary to return.  In other circumstances, he may have found himself tempted to like Laurence, but under the current conditions he was hard pressed to take favorably to anyone, or any_thing for that matter.  _

"Laurence is the DWA's deputy ambassador to the SDE," Moody supplied.  "Not the exactly the easiest job on the planet."  

"Being a deputy ambassador is much like being the vice president," Laurence said, his disarming smile never wavering, "you often find yourself doing all the work.  High ranking diplomats usually decided that the best way of serving Uncle Sam is by taking extended vacations in exotic locals; I think the ambassador is currently in Barbados on a fact-finding mission, which of course translates as discovering the best ways to get tanned, drunk, and laid, probably in that order.  The things we do for our country," Laurence smiled at James once again, and it took a great deal of effort from Prong's not to have his mouth curve upwards in a mirroring grin.  "So what it all amounts to is that I'm stuck with all the dirty work."  

When the sounds of Laurence's voice died away, so did the spell of amicability his words had cast over James.  The American was admittedly friendly, but too friendly—it was almost as if he was putting on a performance.  His easy-going chatter seemed scripted, his firm handshake rehearsed, his disheveled, boyish manner cultivated.  There was a coldness in Laurence's eyes that seemed very alien to the warm smile on his face, and James knew that only one of the American's emotions could be genuine.  He wouldn't be surprised if Moody had ordered Robert Laurence to befriend James in an attempt to make him drop his guard and render himself meek, easily manipulated.  And they hadn't expected him to see through their ploy…

With a lurch, James realized that a week ago, he probably wouldn't have sensed anything was amiss, but Miriken's high-stakes game of cat and mouse had given him more than just frozen fingers and a few bruises.  It had wrenched the blinders off of his sense of trust.  He felt horrid, dirty, miserable—just plain wrong—for staring at Laurence and seeing not the warm grin or the amicable countenance or the thousands of other things that made him a man to be trusted.  Instead, he had to zero in on the American's eyes; those cold brown eyes were full of a hard icy intensity that reminded him of Moody—Miriken.  

Eyes were the windows to the soul.  

James snatched his hand from Laurence's grasp, furious not only at the American's faux-friendliness, but at his own inability to control the situation.  He needed answers, and only one man was going to provide them.  Thus resolved, he turned his eyes to Alastor Moody.  "What about Vietnam?"  

----

They called it the Glorious War.    

Splendid, noble, and no need to worry boys, undoubtedly very short.  

They called on young wizards to enlist—to join the brave band of recruits headed by an elite international squadron of Aurors led by Alastor Moody, one of the few men in England whose very aura seemed to shine like a beacon, cutting through the clouds of doubt and despair that hung about the wizarding population like ubiquitous smog.  Moody, the name was on every tongue, causing that particular mouth to curl into a cowlick smile which no amount of combing could wrestle back into a straight line.  And that grin caused the collective face of the wizarding world to light up like a torch, the ever-flickering flame of their hope stoked by Alastor Moody.  Ah yes, within his gnarled hands Alastor Moody held the hope of an entire generation.

Hope can smolder like a final cigarette, the small conciliation it brings burning away to leave nothing but emptiness.  

They called it the Glorious War.  

Come boys, come and take your rightful place in the glorious war, fight side by side with valiant soldiers in our illustrious ranks, capstoned by Alastor Moody, a general worth dying for—Come!  Come and fight for freedom in magnificent battles and emerge victorious like Saint George, the dragon of injustice slain at your feet, sword hoisted high above your head, bright with your reflected glory.  Do not be afraid, boys, for if you shall not conquer, and should instead fall—succumbing to the enemy's charge upon our hallowed battle fields, take one moment and remember d_ulce et decorum est pro patria mori: it is sweet and fitting to die for your country.  _

They called it Vietnam.  

The wizards were the doughboys of the war; magical interest in Vietnam wasn't kindled until very late in the game with regards to the Muggles.  The first batch of wizarding troops rolled in at the very end of the summer of 1971.  Although headed by Moody and composed mainly of British warlocks, they were a strictly multinational force, representing the International Confederation of Wizards.  Besides making pointless decrees that no one bothered to follow, the ICW's main objective was to protect wizarding populations worldwide.  When news of war atrocities directed towards the Vietnamese magical community reached the council, they felt it their solemn duty to act.

The exact story that set them off always varied somewhat, depending on who you heard it from, but its basic facts were essentially the same:  A small isolated pocket of Vietnamese wizards were living if not happily, at least unobtrusively, in a village in the Mekong Delta.  Suddenly, in July of 1971 the settlement was stormed and torched by a platoon of American soldiers with ties to DWA, the Department of Wizarding Affairs for the United States and her Protectorates.  America was thrown out of the International Confederation of Wizards in disgrace, and although economic sanctions were immediately enacted against Uncle Sam, Moody and a few other hard-liners lobbied for military retaliation in Vietnam.  The majority of the council, although agreeing unanimously that the American's actions were completely reprehensible, was adverse to respond aggressively to what was obviously an isolated incident.  They barely had time to take their moderate stance before it was belied; on August 5th, when a second Wizarding settlement was destroyed in much the same fashion as the first, Moody got his chance.  Three days after the second village burned away to ashes, he flew to Hanoi with the Confederation's blessing, and most importantly, his first shipment of troops.  

It was a full three months before he pulled out completely.   

After the war, Lucius tried everything:  Recreational boozing, binging, trippin'…

…Which of course lead to the occasional smack, crack, and THC, blow, shrooms, and LSD.  

When those failed, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and moved onto the positive remedies: group therapy, sitting in a little circle and saying, "Hello my name is Lucius and I'm more fucked up than you could ever begin to imagine."  Then everyone would clap and the leader would pat him on the back and he'd sit down and begin to simmer and the steam inside him built and built and—

The group therapy didn't work so he moved onto one-on-one counseling at the Diagon Alley offices of Krack, Pott and Spenser.  After Lucius spent about five minutes of lying on a ridiculously uncomfortable couch talking about himself, his doctor (whether Krack, Pott, or Spenser he had never bothered to find out) informed him that he was in love with his mother and if he had gotten that little toy Quidditch set when he was five he would be perfectly sane.  Lucius, for his part, told the psychologist that not only had he gotten multiple toy Quidditch sets by the age of five, his mother had died when he was three.  To which his doctor replied:  "Ah well, screw that prognosis.  For the sake of brevity, let's just say that you're in love with your father."  

It was at that time he started smoking.  

And the steam continued to build.  

His psychologist suggested that he take up knitting to try and alleviate some of his obsessive-compulsive tendencies.  

It was then that he decided that psychoanalysis was a whole crock load of dragon dung and he'd be damned if he was going to continue to pay a bloody wanker five grand monthly to tell him that he wanted to get inside his dad's pants.  

When his father's current mistress, who had gone to Tibet a perfectly normal witch and returned bedecked in orange robes determined to "become one with the Dow" (which confused Lucius to no end as he couldn't possibly comprehend why anyone, as enticing as money was, would want to screw a stock index), suggested meditation, he had laughed her off, blaming her inane recommendation on the high altitudes in the Himalayas.  As the weeks grew into months and the steam inside of him continued to build, he decided to follow her advice, not because he believed it would help, but as a last resort.  He would sit on the floor of a darkened room and stare at the ceiling counting its cracks… _one, two, three… until he lost track and forced himself to start over, counting again… __fifty-four, fifty-five… and again__… six-hundred and sixty-two, six-hundred and sixty-three… futilely trying to bore himself into a apathetic stupor beyond pain__… one thousand one-hundred and twenty-one, one thousand one-hundred and twenty-two … beyond memory__… one thousand nine-hundred and forty-three, one thousand nine-hundred and forty-four, one thousand nine-hundred and… __and… and then he would lose count.  And have to start again.  __One… two… three…_

His pot began to rattle, steam seeping out of the kettle's nozzle in a thin trickle of liquid gray.  

It was when he started unconsciously ripping tiny holes in the carpet during his meditation sessions that he took up chess, just to give his hands something constructive to do.  Since he only ever played with himself, black and white were always evenly matched, working themselves into a corner, wasting hours, going nowhere.

Then, he exploded.

He realized that the catalyst wasn't the toy Quidditch set, it was the war.  

And the problem wasn't life after Vietnam, but the person he had been before it.  

And the fault lay not with him, but his father, for making him enlist, for cutting him off, for feeding him a lie—a lie that eventually consumed all that had been good and true within him, leaving him empty, heartless, a vessel ready for filling. 

So he fled from his memories of the war, cutting ties with English wizards who had known him before 1971, just as he ran from Britain itself, leaving Malfoy Manor, a veritable temple of Neo-Gothic glory, for the Malfé Villa, a shrine to all things gothic and gory.  And finally, he escaped from his father, from the disapproving stare and the wrinkled brow, from the harsh words and the staunch resolve, and from that small, oft-hidden smile, that in spite of everything, believed in him when he could not.  

Lucius left his father in favor of his Spanish ancestors without so much as a goodbye.  The old man did not try to reinitiate contact.  He cancelled any lazy summers he had planned to spend in Cordoba and stayed well away from the continent, giving his son space.  Lucius supposed that it was because the old man supposed that he understood his child's angst.  His antediluvian father, who had been too young for the First World War and too old for the second, still had the audacity to pretend that he _understood.  He feigned fathoming Lucius's pain in the same breath that he pronounced the righteousness of war, still having the ingenuous arrogance to toss his only son, as naked and naïve as a sacrificial lamb, into the conflict that he lacked the courage to venture into himself.  _

Lucius didn't come home for Christmas that year.  

Or the next. 

----

A question was posed.  "Grindelwald=s theories are actually quite interesting, have you read them?"

"Bits and pieces," came the reply, "but never the entire compilation."  

"His treatise defending the theory of Wizarding Superiority is nothing short of enlightening."  

"I had always heard his methods were somewhat... pseudoscientific," a third voice volunteered incredulously.  

"Pseudoscientific?" the first voice scoffed.  "There's nothing pseudo about them.  He was classically trained, Grindelwald, at the Stewart-Chamberlain Institute for Medical Wizardry in Vienna, he took the scientific integrity of his experiments very seriously, repeating each test at least three times before drawing any kind of solid conclusion.  Pseudoscientific?" the voice laughed derisively, "Pseudoscientific... what will we hear from you next, Malfoy?"  

When Malfoy failed to volunteer a reply, the first voice continued, a hint of satisfaction in its tone.  "Grindelwald accomplished what no scientist before him was able to do, he verified over 1000 years of wizarding theory as solid fact: namely that Mudbloods are just that, mud bloods, biologically inferior to even the most magically inept wizards.  And beyond that vital breakthrough, Grindelwald was able to quantify their deficiency, ruling that a Mudblood was exactly one-sixth of a regular human being."

Malfoy's voice was twined with acid strings of sarcasm, "Oh?  And how exactly was Grindelwald able to measure this quantitative inadequacy?"  

The second voice, all but silent until this moment, coolly took up the thread of Malfoy's question.  "Phrenology."  

"Phrenology?"  This failed to impress Malfoy, who sounded nothing but excruciatingly incredulous.  

"A very reliable science," explained the first voice, "operating on the assumption that one's personality and innate biology are displayed in the shape of their skull."  

"Through extensive tests," the second voice continued, "Grindelwald discovered that the skull of the wizard is subtly larger than that of the ordinary Mudblood, demonstrating larger brain development, hence, greater reasoning capacities, thus, an enhanced ability to understand and manipulate the world—"

"Et cetera, et cetera," the first voice accented.  

"But being the scientist that he was," the second voice continued, Grindelwald was not content with that paltry qualitative evidence.  He needed conclusive scientific data, quantitative fact—"

"So in comparing the precisely measured brain mass of live Mudbloods with the estimated capacity of their Wizarding counterparts, Grindelwald was able to arrive at the one-sixth statistic." 

"The estimated capacity?" Malfoy's voice was cut with sarcasm.  "Grindelwald was suddenly too squeamish to dive right into their sculls?"

The first voice spoke with conciliatory condescension.  "He didn't want to cause any unnecessary harm to wizards."  

"But Muggles are fair game?"  

"Let me put it to you simply, Malfoy," the first voice said, his tone slow and measured as if he were speaking to a small child.  "Wizards are mentally, physically, and God knows magically superincumbent to the Mudblood.  I could easily argue our right at sovereignty over the Muggles on the basis of such blatant superiority, but if this seems too radical for your taste, I'll even allow you a more moderate stance—demanding only Wizarding-Mudblood equality.  Why is it, Malfoy," the first voice said, his tone pitched lower, the sudden dip in volume heralding a rise in intensity, "that we Wizards are forced down into hiding like common animals while the Mudblood, little more than a beast, rules the world?" 

"The Wizards' exile is self-imposed," Malfoy snapped.  "Wizards can go out and visit the Muggle world whenever they wish.  I do often."  

"Risking such atrocities as witch burnings and dunkings?" the first voice countered.  

"That was centuries ago, in the Middle Ages," Malfoy replied scornfully.  "It is no longer an issue."  

But the first voice pressed on, undaunted, "And shootings and muggings and rapes and murders—" 

"Which are practiced by Muggles against other Muggles," Malfoy cut him off, "and not exclusively directed towards wizards."  

"You've said it yourself," the second voice interjected quietly.  "This is a race that kills their own, no better than beasts.  We who push for wizarding domination are doing the Mudbloods a favor.  We are saving them from themselves."  

"How can you argue with that?  Once you take a good long look at it, it's so very simple—" the first voice broke off, momentarily distracted from the superiority of the Wizarding race.  "Leaving so early, Malfoy?"  

Pausing by the door, Ilona jerked her cigarette from her mouth sharply.  Her fingers trembled slightly, ash falling from the tip of her fag to lie smoldering upon the parquet floor.  "I've just recalled a previous engagement, Avery," she said through clenched teeth.  

"Oh?" Avery stood up, a falsely warm smile distorting his chiseled good looks.  A forelock of his blue-black hair fell into his dark eyes as he extended a hand to Ilona.  "Give me one more chance, Malfoy, and see if we can't be suitably _engaging."_

"As delightful as I'm sure that would be—" Ilona began, but Avery cut her off before she could fully reject his offer, reaching forward and gripping her small fingers in his large hand.  

"Perhaps it is our company that you do not find _engaging, Malfoy?" he asked, cocking his head slightly to the side.  "No?"_

Smiling falsely, Ilona extricated her hand from Avery's, pointedly wiping it down the front of her white mink coat.  "Don't be stupid, Avery.  You know that I love nothing better that your company."  

"Then why the rush?" Avery asked, regaining control of Ilona's hand and pulling her closer to the center of the room.  "Let's see if together we can't make this party engaging, Malfoy."

The second voice, which had been sitting in silence, welcomed Ilona back into the fold with a knowing quip. "I certainly hope it wasn't something I said, sister of mine."  

"Of course not," she said, sinking into a sofa beside Avery, leaning into his chest as he slipped his arm around her shoulders.  She took a drag on her cigarette, smoke coloring her words a pale shade of gray.  "Nothing coming from your mouth could ever upset me, Lucius." 

He reclined against the opposite couch with a fluid measured ennui, lifting his cigarette from his lips and then slipping it back into his mouth as if his entire world had narrowed to that tiny cylinder of rolled paper and clipped tobacco.  He raised his eyes, allowing her into his exclusive sphere of existence.  "Likewise, I'm sure."  

Avery was not oblivious to either's sarcasm, so the words issuing from his perfectly sculpted lips were equally colored.  "What a touching portrait of familial love."  

"You should see Christmas," Ilona iterated, reclining against his arm, sinking a little too far into its depths to be spurred by a natural attraction.  

Lucius's shoulders tightened imperceptibly as Avery snickered, the sound of his laughter licking across the surface of the tension strung between the two Malfoys with as much effect as fire upon steel.  

"One day you'll come around, Malfoy," Avery said good-naturedly.  "One day, the two of you will find a happy medium."  

"With Lucius," Ilona said, a bitter twist to the truth in her voice, "there is never a medium, happy or otherwise."  

Avery glanced at the other Malfoy, seeing how he would respond to this sharpened barb.  Lucius, still projecting an air of outward boredom, lowered his cigarette from his lips as he gently raised an eyebrow—wordlessly attacking the veracity of Ilona's statement.  "What good is a medium when one is always right?"  

"Or when one is unable to delineate between what is right and wrong," Ilona added, understated suggestion in her tone.  

"A skill you have yet to master," Lucius said, aware that he had won their brief verbal skirmish.  An equally succinct smile danced across his face as his eyes flickered from hers to focus on some indeterminable spot beyond the ornate walls of Avery's front parlor. 

 "Take the Mudblood issue for example," Avery piggybacked, his arm suddenly heavy against Ilona's shoulders.  "That's a case where you are stubbornly refusing to accept the truth.  We possess insurmountable evidence supporting the correct conclusion put forth by Grindelwald, while you have nothing but paltry hearsay supporting your little pet theory," his chiseled Adonis features broke into an indulgent smile, "that Mudbloods are more than just… _pets."  _

"Ilona has kept a few Mudbloods," Lucius said, exhaling a mouthful of smoke as he spoke, "as pets of sorts."  

Avery immediately picked up on the innuendoes in Lucius's voice.  "Tell me," he said, turning to Ilona, tightening his grip upon her shoulder.  "What is it like to make love to a Mudblood?"  

She felt her chest tighten with offense at this breach of her oft-erstwhile modesty.  "Better than you," she spat.  As much as she hated herself for such a childish retort, it couldn't compare to her disgust at her inability to keep herself from responding to Avery's query.  His question had been formed to evoke such a reaction and she had knowingly walked straight into his trap, unable to help herself.    

Avery, sensing that she was far more uncomfortable than he was, simply brushed off her barb with a biting laugh.  "Is that really so?" he squeezed her hand so tight that it stung, wordlessly voicing an indisputable answer to his question.  Noting the sudden contraction of her shoulders he offered a quick conciliatory comment, "Oh don't beat yourself up, Malfoy.  Mudbloods are alright as a sport, I'd say."  

"I'd sooner sleep with my father's hunting bitch," Lucius sneered, his eyes flickering to Ilona.  The intensity of his gaze caused her fingers to clench white-knuckled around her cigarette, which she raised mechanically to her lips, putting on the pretense of apathy, determined to show her brother than whatever he said, she didn't care.  

"Come, Lucius," Avery said, glancing at Ilona.  "It isn't as if she's married one."  

Sirius… 

And as the brother's eyes focused upon the sister's, each one's a mirror image of the other's, a chill crept up the rickety stepladder of her spine, causing it to shudder under the unanticipated weight.  

Sirius! 

(January 2, 1980

Moscow, USSR)

"Sirius!"

Slowly, like a whale emerging from the depths of a great ocean he broke through the surface of sleep, its gentle waves lapping along the sides of his conscious mind as he gasped for air, acclimating himself to a rude awakening.  

"Sirius!"

His eyes snapped open to behold a woman bending over him, her silvery-white hair floating about her head like a halo.  For a moment, he thought it was his wife, but then she bent closer and he caught sight of her smile and he knew in an instant that it wasn't the missus.  His wife's smile was never so ingenuous.  

Narcissa.  

With the name, it all came flooding back to him, the Sad Clown, Dzhugashvilli's attempted arrest, their subsequent fight—but none of that seemed to matter when Narcissa bent closer to him, sliding down by his side.  Her warmth was a welcome reprieve from the Moscow chill.  She slid her arms around his torso, allowing him to catch her hands in his own and hold them fast.  He took the opportunity to pull her closer, his sudden need for proximity not just on account of the frigid weather.  "We've been arrested," she said quietly.  "We're being held by the KGB.  A Muggle doctor came in to rewrap your leg about an hour ago, when I first came to.  I think we're being held in a truck, or a transport, but it hasn't moved the entire time I've been awake.  How do you feel?"  

"Alright," Sirius replied, running his hand up and down the side of her arm.  His head hurt somewhat, although the pain wasn't significant enough to be out of the ordinary, and his leg was a bit sore which, considering that he had been shot, was significantly better that he could have theoretically hoped for.  The news of their arrest and confinement, however, failed to elicit any kind of reaction from Sirius, which mildly unnerved him as he felt as if he should be, at the very least, a tad upset.  He wrote off this odd apathy to an all-encroaching sense of lethargy that seemed to invade every facet of his newly wakened mind.  "Tired," he finally iterated, yawning for good measure.  "I'm very tired."  

"The KGB doctor said they had to inject you with a sleeping drug in order to remove your bullet," Narcissa replied.  "That's probably what's making you so tired."  

"Wait," Sirius interrupted her.  The longer he forced himself to remain awake, the more drug-induced lethargy slipped away, allowing him to regain control of his faculties.  The numb apathy was ebbing and he felt slightly amazed at the treatment he was getting from the KGB.  All the stories he had heard about the famed Soviet organization had painted them as less than hospitable hosts.  "They removed the bullet?"

"Fairly easily, according to the doctor."

"Why?"  Sirius asked, utterly bewildered.  This sounded nothing like the KGB of rumor.

"The doctor said they don't usually make visitors so comfortable, but they found your visa in your jacket.  You're a British national," she said quietly, as if this meant everything.  "There are laws, treaties dictating your treatment, and then on the off chance that you return home…" she trailed off, letting Sirius fill in the blank.  

"I'm to make a good report," he said quietly.  Despite the fact that the KGB surgery had probably saved his life, or at least his leg, he felt viscerally offended.  What made him so special?  If it was Narcissa that had been shot, chances were that the Russian organization wouldn't even have lifted a scalpel. The circumstances of his surgery were incongruous with any sense of human propriety.  The inequity between the KGB's treatment of foreigners like himself and Russian nations such as Miriken was a textbook example of Grade A hypocrisy.  

"They found your wands, too," Narcissa said, a touch of amusement in her voice.  Evidently sensing his anger, she was trying to change the subject.  "They couldn't figure out what to do with them though, so they just put them back into your jackets.  The doctor asked me what the two of you wanted with sticks."  Her voice, falsely light, now darkened with sobriety, "They kept both of your visas though."  

"Both of your visas?"  Sirius echoed, interrupting Narcissa for a second time.  "I wasn't aware that there were two of me."  

"Both of you," Narcissa clarified, "you and Lucius."  

Sirius tensed against her, and when he next spoke his voice was strangled, as if he was trying to strain all emotion out of it but had only half succeeded, leaving a mangled mess of a phrase dripping with ill-concealed hate.  "What is Malfoy doing here?"  

His reaction alarmed her, but she fought down her own disconcertion in an effort to quell his.  Tightening her arms around him, she ran her fingers up and down his hand in an attempt to bring some element of relaxation into those unbearable tense muscles, constricted by the memory of some past animosity.  "Lucius is here as well," she said quietly.  

He broke from her arms, sitting up abruptly and gazing about the prison-lorry like a man possessed.  "Where is he?"  

Sitting up beside him, Narcissa pointed to the spot about four meters away where Malfoy lay.  His inert body seemed almost lifeless—Sirius's hopes skyrocketed—until he noticed the gentle rise and fall of the blond's chest, so slight it was almost imperceptible.  "He hasn't woken up yet," Narcissa iterated quietly.  

What she said wasn't strictly true, although she had no way of knowing otherwise.  Lucius lay awake listening to their whispers, body still with the pretense of sleep, eyes wide open under closed lids.  

"Let's get out of here," Sirius whispered to Narcissa, gripping her arm in an attempt to pull her to her feet.  

She shook her head, silver curls incandescent, reflecting the small amount of light that was present in the dim truck.  "We're prisoners, Sirius.  We can't just get up and go; there is only one door and it's bolted from the outside.  This is a truck, they must mean to transport us, but as to where—" her voice quivered, betraying for the first time the fear that she had been trying to quell ever since Sirius had opened his eyes, mere minutes beforehand.  

"Shhh."  Kneeling back down, he reached forward to grip her hand.  His voice was consoling, strong for the both of them.  "It will be alright, Narcissa.  I promise."  

Intellectually, she knew that his promise didn't account for anything.  Sirius could mean it with all sincerity, but in Soviet Russia, this godforsaken proletariat utopia that abided by no laws except the whims of its upper crust rulers, his vow was worth nothing.  Besides, he had made her a promise before, in not so many words, but through his actions, his tender looks, the soft touch of his kiss, completing her and leaving her empty in the same instant.  Last night, Sirius's tacit oath had been shattered.  The proof of his infidelity lay twisted around the ring finger of his left hand:  a narrow band of silver, winking maliciously at her in the dim light of the prison lorry.  She had slept with married men before.  In her line of work, it was near impossible to avoid it.  But she had never lain with one that had the audacity to toy with her emotions, to pretend that he cared, forcing her to believe a lie.  

The worst part about his betrayal was that she couldn't force herself to blame him for it.  Last night, when he had been pierced by Dzhugashvilli's bullet, she would have given anything for one caustic quip, one lopsided smile—a single lying kiss.  It was only through his loss that she could fully grasp how precious he really was to her.  She didn't know if she could bear his absence, even if his company was only a fallacy.  The moments of tenderness that he gave her, be they fact or fancy, were all that she had.  

As if sensing her thoughts, Sirius squeezed her hand tight, the cold metal of his ring brushing against her warm flesh.  She flinched.  "I should have told you that I—"

She cut him off.  "It doesn't matter."  

"It does," he contradicted firmly.  "It does matter and it—"

"Is beyond remedy," she said quietly.  

"What I'm trying to say, Narcissa, is that you don't deserve—"

"Don't," she cut him off.  

"Don't what?"  

"Apologize."  

"No," he replied firmly, meeting her gaze, confusion constricting his eyebrows.  "Why shouldn't I apologize?"  

"You're the customer," she said quietly, hating herself for the bitterness in her voice, but unable, despite her best efforts, to mask it.  "The customer is always right."  

"Shut up."  His voice was hard, angry.  

"You don't owe me anything," she continued, unable to stop herself.  Her voice was raspy with desperation.  "I'm the whore.  You gave me what I asked for."  

"Shut up," he repeated, his voice louder than it had been before.  

"There's no need for an apology."  Her words choked in her throat as she squeezed his fingers so tightly they turned purple.  "No need to tip the bill."  

"Narcissa, please—"

"Don't spare a please on me."  

"Please," he repeated; his tone was guilt ripped raw.  "Please don't talk like this.  Give me some way to fix the situation—something to say, to do, to give," he broke off, desperation ingrained in his every word.  "Let me give you something—"

"You've given me everything I could possibly ask for."  

"I've given you nothing!" he yelled, and she was surprised at the vehemence in his voice.  "Nothing except a bed of lies!"  

"Sirius," she said quietly, running a hand up to his face, tracing the line of his jaw to finally wander to his mouth, drawing it closed with one little finger.  

"Narcissa, I—"

"Be quiet."  She cut him off, lowering her voice to the barest shadow of a whisper.  She dropped her head to confine her words to just the two of them, her shoulders hunched, her manner resigned, as if she was about to reveal something unforgivably shameful.  "I love you."  

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a quick shake of her head.  "Don't ruin it."  

"I don't deserve—"

"I know."  

Slowly, as if he didn't really know what to do and was simply making it up as he went hesitantly along, he reached forward to hold her hand.  Her fingers lay limp in his grip like a bird that someone has forgotten to feed, lying dead behind the bars of its rusty cage.  "Let me take you away from here, Narcissa."  

"We're prisoners, Sirius," she replied, smashing his effort at reconciliation.  

 In one word, he resurrected the fantasy:  "Afterwards," he iterated as if the sudden imprisonment was a mere blip in the course of their lives, "when this is all over with."  

"If this ever ends."  

"When," he replied firmly, daring her to hope.  "When this ends let me take you home with me, to England.  After Russia, you'll scarcely believe it."  

"And your wife?" Narcissa cut in.  

His voice was quiet, his underlying tone evasive.  "Doesn't matter."

Her instinct told her that it did matter very much indeed, but she let him continue with his beautiful proposition, a proposition that she wanted to believe in with all of her soul.  She knew, in her heart of hearts, that it would never come to fruition.  

"First, I'll take you to Land's End," he was saying, "at the very tip of the island.  There's an amusement park there, full of rag tag rides with some really excellent mechanical pirates.  We can go on the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, whatever you want.  I'll buy you cotton candy until you get sick and then some.  Have you ever tasted cotton candy, Narcissa?"  

She shook her head no.  

"Then I'll take you to Wales, to where my friend Remus lives.  You'll like Remus; I know he'll like you as well, and Wales, well Wales is beautiful country, all hills and forests and mountains, mountains like you wouldn't believe, covered in green so vibrant it's almost blinding.  We can go to the seaside too, if you want.  For me, there's nothing like the sea, it's so unbelievably vast, stretching for miles and miles.  There's nothing but water as far as your eye can see.  I grew up in a city, Narcissa, and to be confronted with all that open space is—"

"Frightening," she filled in.  

"Incomprehensible," he amended.  "It makes me feel very small, but part of something bigger at the same time."  

"London," she prompted quietly.  London was all she knew of England; it was a mythic city to her, an El Dorado of neon light and gray buildings.  She imagined it as Moscow, only brighter, light invading every inch of the city from the Queen's own bedroom to the poorest tenement.  Going to London, striding through the El Dorado, would make Sirius idle dream into solid reality.  It was a solid corroboration that all the beaches, mountains, and roller coasters in the world could never confirm.  

"We'll go to London," he said.  "First, if that's what you want."  

"Yes," she replied to his unspoken question.  "That's what I want."  

"There's so much to do in London, I could talk for days and never hit upon it all.  Just walking through the city is a joy all unto itself.  I work in London, live there actually—you will too, when we go to England.  It's just a small apartment, right off Charing Cross Road.  That's not too far from Diagon Alley, the wizarding section of town.  We'll have to go there, buy you a wand—"

"Buy me a wand," she echoed.  

"I'll show you off in the Leaky Cauldron.  I'll be the luckiest man in the bar.  I'm sure you won't have any trouble getting something to drink, every wizard in the pub is going to stand up and offer you a round."  

"The Leaky Cauldron," there was a note of worry in her husky voice, "it's just a bar?"  

"Just a bar," Sirius assured her, "nothing more."  

There was a knot in her throat and when she opened her mouth to speak, her voice was unsteady, a short step away from tears.  "What a beautiful dream."  

"Indeed."  Lucius had been listening to the entire sequence, and he made no attempt to disguise his amusement.  The true root of Black's fantasy was obvious to him, and it wasn't any deep, passionate, star-crossed love for the girl.  It felt guilty for how it had used her and the pathetic sot, with its self-righteous Gryffindor morals, was trying to make some kind of an absolution for the harm that it had done.  Up to its usual standards of insight and compassion, the Mudblood's way of righting his wrong was to create a ridiculous tour of the British Isles.  When Lucius saw the pessimistic gleam of hope on Narcissa's face, wanting to believe in the dream in spite of her common sense, he realized that Black's fantasy was more a catharsis for its own feelings of guilt than conciliation to the whore.  Ultimately, the theoretical trip to England would only mock her with its empty promises, doing far more harm than good.  

Lucius decided to smash Black's dream before it was fully formed, and thus, lessen the pain of its fallacy for the girl.  As worthless as the Mudblood was, he could scarcely believe that it was self-centered enough to delude Narcissa so.  She was like a child, believing any words that held some semblance of tenderness.  Unfortunately for the girl, she had mistaken Black's pity for love, and reciprocated its empty emotion with genuine feeling of her own.  Lucius understood her actions.  What he couldn't grasp was why the Mudblood was encouraging the girl with its hollow fantasies that would never, in a thousand years, become solid truth.  It was ridiculous, hypocritical, self-indulgent, and presented an opportunity he could not bring himself to resist.  

"And where are your tickets to the Heathrow flooport, Black?" he said, an undercurrent of razor-sharp malice slicing neatly through his innocent tone.  "You must let me know where you got them.  I've been meaning to get out of here myself."   

"Back to your empty house," Sirius spat in retaliation.  The tenderness with which had addressed Narcissa was gone without a trace.  "It must be hard when even your own family can't abide your company."  

Lucius grit his teeth.  He knew that Black's insult was groundless; it was he that could not abide the company of his family, not the other way around, but nevertheless, he had the sudden urge to hurt the Mudblood as much as he could.  He knew just where to twist the dagger.  "How old are you, Narcissa?"  The question was deceptively simple, and its answer, if Lucius's suspicions were correct, was yet another log to throw onto to Black's rapidly growing bonfire of guilt.  

"Fuck you, _Malfoy," Black spat.  It twisted the last word into more of an explicative than the first two, pleasing Lucius to no end.  He hadn't anticipated getting a reaction out of the Gryffindor so easily.  Narcissa hadn't even opened her mouth yet and it was already spouting off curses.  The only explanation for such a vehement reaction was that Black's suspicions about Narcissa's age mirrored his own, stoking the Mudblood's remorse.  _

"It's a perfectly legitimate question, Black," Lucius replied; his tone was the epitome of mocking politeness, an intentional contrast to the Mudblood's curses.  "What," he said innocently, "are you afraid of?"  

He knew very well what Black was afraid of.  

Sirius's hand clenched itself into a fist.  How could the bastard read him so well, know exactly where to strike when to throw salt on open wounds—

It ran in the family.  

He didn't want to know Narcissa's age, didn't want to know because he already had the general idea of her answer.  He didn't want any guilt piled atop his already hunched shoulders.  He should have never entered into the affair in the first place, should have never come to her after their initial night together.  One night is fun and games, but any more than that and an unspoken commitment is enacted—a personal connection that is more than just flesh and sweat and stolen kisses.  That was a commitment Sirius could not uphold.  But every man has his weakness.  

He just couldn't help himself.  

Somehow, he didn't think that this excuse would stand up before Saint Peter and his heavenly choir; hell, it didn't even stand up before his own conscience.  

"Answer us, Narcissa," Lucius said, a note of triumph etched into his words.  

Narcissa hesitated; she sensed Sirius's anguish and though she didn't really understand its source, she did not want to inadvertently cause him any more pain.  But when Lucius crossed the small space of the lorry with his ice-gray gaze, focusing his pale eyes upon her own she couldn't help but remember—

Should I brand you, girl? 

And then how he had dropped the cigarette between his fingers, as his lip curled and his eyes rolled shut, words coming from deep inside of him, colored gray by the smoke he had held in his mouth.  "I don't need to brand you, you're already mine…"  

_Mine._

"Seventeen."  

Sirius flinched as if he had been slapped.  

"What's your birthday?" Lucius said amicably.  "There's no need to look so glum about it, Black.  I'm just trying to figure what year she would be at Hogwarts."  

"You've made your point, Malfoy," Sirius said, his voice toneless, painfully empty.  

"December twenty-third," Narcissa said quietly, glancing at Black, her face contorted in a mixture of concern and confusion.  She obviously wanted to reach out and touch him, but was afraid of his reaction.  Sirius averted his gaze.  

"You turned seventeen December twenty-third?" Lucius smiled at Narcissa, although his words were meant for Sirius alone.  "When was that?  Eight… no, nine days ago—well, in that case, Happy Birthday," still smirking, he turned his gaze to Padfoot.  "That would make her, what, Black?" he paused, savoring the other man's tension, "a sixth year at Hogwarts?  You've been out of there for how long?  Three years?   Four?"  

"Two," Sirius replied lifelessly.  

"Oh, it's perfectly alright then," Lucius said, the malice that had been running beneath the surface of his words rearing its head, coating the contours of his remark.   "Forgive me."  

"You're older," Sirius snapped, trying unsuccessfully to put Lucius on the defensive.  

"I am aware of that," Lucius replied condescendingly.  "And as the oldest, and most experienced here, I feel it necessary to offer you," he nodded at the girl, "a piece of advice.  I plan to have this suit burned when I return to Cordoba; it's been in such close proximity to a Mudblood for so long than I'm sure that it is beyond repair.  I suggest that you do the same, Narcissa."    

At the word Mudblood, he saw Black flinch.  The anger that had caused him to twitch carried over into his tone, acerbic with raw disgust.  "How do you live with yourself, Malfoy?"  

Lucius smiled vapidly in the face of Sirius's insult.  The Mudblood was only baiting him; anything it said was worthless, not even worthy of a grain of salt.  "I've often wondered the same about you.  You must tell me, Black, what is it like to be one-sixth of a human being?  Not that Mudbloods like yourself have ever experienced full awareness, but I'm sure that you will give us the best explanation you're capable of."  

Remarkably, it was not Sirius, but Narcissa who responded.  "Shut up!" she yelled at him, leaping to her feet.  "He's more of a human being than you will ever be!"  

It surprised Lucius that Narcissa's childish insult hurt him as much as it did, which was slight, but the pain was present nevertheless.  He had supposed that she, and by extension her opinions, meant nothing to him.  He knew that the girl was operating under a delusion, blinded by her love of Black, and though this soothed the bite of her words, it didn't take the full pain away.  He normally brushed other people's comments away, dismissing them as idle babble, so no one had evoked any sort of strong negative reaction from him since… well, since Ilona.  Though the physical resemblance between the two women was uncanny, this skinny, slight whore was definitely not Ilona and the thought that she might wield as much power over him as his sister did, was not only disconcerting, but entirely unwelcome.  He wanted to hurt Narcissa more than she had wounded him, trumping, and somehow neutralizing the pain that he felt.  Narrowing his eyes, he turned to Black.  "Call off your attack bitch."    

----

"Vietnam?"  Laurence laughed, much to James's surprise.  "What about Vietnam?"  

"He doesn't know, Laurence," Moody said.  His gray eyes, full of chronic dislike for James, narrowed to tiny slits.   

James, for his part, felt like a little puffskien dumped into a pit of ravenous manticores, left utterly to his own devices—only to discover that his defenses against the monsters' razor sharp teeth amounted to a cloud of fluffy hair and a little tongue that was useful for picking out children's boogies.  "What's going on?" he asked; his voice sounded very small, even to his own ears.  

Laurence, shooting Moody a quizzical look, answered James's question before the old Auror could object.  "The International Confederation of Wizards needed an excuse to enter into the Vietnam War.  We at the DWA gave them one."

"But the Mekong Massacre…" James began and then trailed off, too confused to finish his thought.  

Moody decided to put his own spin on the facts, sensing that James's discovery was inevitable.  "We needed a way to enter the war; we had received reports that Voldemort had a hand in the fighting already going on in Vietnam."  

James glared at Moody.  How could the Auror chief, who lived through You-Know-Who's rise to power, witnessing a great deal of the Death Eaters' brutality firsthand, be so thoughtless as to refer to the Dark Lord by his true name?  Not only was it careless, it insulted the memory of those who had died in the eight year war against the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  Moody, of all people, should know better.  "So why not announce that publicly?" James snapped.  He wasn't sure if he could believe what he was hearing.  

"And alert Voldemort that we were on his tail?" Moody responded, mouth pursing into a severe frown that was eerily reminiscent of Professor McGonagall.  "I don't think so, Potter.  Besides," he continued, "in the early 70s, Voldemort was not the household name he is today.  Ever since Grindelwald want-to-be Dark Lords have come and go like pop singers; very few of them have any staying power—and do you know why, Potter?"  

"Why?" James snapped, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back into his chair with a pout.  Moody was lecturing him like he was a particularly thick second year back at Hogwarts.  Not only had he graduated from Hogwarts not one, but two years before, he had never been slow at anything, easily gaining the slot of Head Boy and beating out Lily for the top marks in his graduating class.  

"Because we at the Auror Bureau nip them in the bud without alerting the public to the threat.  If your average wizard off the street was owled every time he was in mortal peril, not only would we rack up a huge deficit in postal fees, there would be mass hysteria.  It's much easier to keep the public in the dark."  

"That's not fair," James said, every ounce of him trembling with indignation.  

"Fair has nothing to do with it," Moody snapped.  "You play fair, you end up dead.  Let that be a lesson to you, Potter."   

"I still think you're wrong—" James began.  

Moody cut him off.  "Would it make you feel better, or perhaps quieter, Potter, if I told you the specific reasons for not publicly disclosing Vietnam?" he snapped, shooting James a glare of utter exasperation.  

"Yes," James replied; realizing that he couldn't possibly worsen his relationship with Moody, and therefore may as well try to rectify it as best he could, he added apologetically, "please."  

"Voldemort is not like the other erstwhile Dark Lords," Moody said, leaning across the table towards James.  "He has the virtue of patience.  He didn't come out straight away spouting off Unforgivable Curses and preaching world domination, oh no, quite the contrary, Potter—in his early years, the Dark Lord fashioned himself as an academic of sorts, publishing a number of books and papers that piggybacked on Grindelwald's ideas of Wizarding racial superiority.  He managed to gather quite a following.  You were just a child so you may not remember, but the early 70s were a period of economic upheaval in the wizarding world—a good number of factories shut down and the Ministry of Magic went through a massive restructuring, downsizing from fifteen Departments to seven, laying off a good number of witches and wizards in the process.  What I'm trying to say, Potter, is that it was relatively easy for Voldemort to find an audience, people who needed to feel that they had something going for them, even if it was only their wizarding heritage.  It was this group of discontents that formed the core of Voldemort's support, and carried out a few initial Muggle-baitings and burnings in the name of the Death Eaters.  Voldemort never directly participated, which was very clever of him, you see, because there was never any reliable evidence linking him to these atrocities.  In the public's eye, the Dark Lord looked like an ultra right-wing author who had no intent of taking his beliefs off the page and into solid action."  

"We at the Auror Bureau," he continued, "guessed that there was a direct connection between Voldemort and the sudden rash of violence against Muggles, but we didn't have any solid proof that would stand up to public scrutiny.  When we heard rumors that Voldemort might be in Vietnam drumming up support from both local and American wizards, it looked like the perfect opportunity to nip his dangerous movement in the bud, but we needed an official excuse to send in troops to eliminate him.  We couldn't come clean with the public because we didn't have any facts to lie on the table; everything we knew about Voldemort was just a matter of anecdotal reports and informed conjectures.  If we had announced that we were taking military action against Voldemort a good number of bleeding-heart liberals would have gone berserk, protesting that he had a right to express his opinions, as unsavory as they might be.  It was much easier to keep our true intentions under wraps."   

"The Mekong Massacre was staged to give the International Confederation of Wizards an excuse to send troops into the Vietnam War with the intent of catching Voldemort before he could do any real harm," Laurence explained, slipping into the chair beside James.  "It was the perfect cover; the ICW was founded as an international humanitarian organization, its main purpose is to ensure basic human rights—such as adequate housing, fair trials, et cetera—for wizarding citizens worldwide.  Any member of the ICW is required by international treaty to provide these civil liberties for their citizens.  Most countries belong:  everyone from the USSR to well… us in the US, actually."  

Laurence took a breath before continuing, "We, the DWA that is, were contacted weeks before the mock massacre and asked to take responsibility for the act.  We were an easy scapegoat.  Not only were our Muggle counterparts already involved in Vietnam, we were the only member of the ICW already so isolated from the main bulk of the wizarding world that we could easily withstand the nominal sanctions the Confederation would mount against us.  And of course," he added, his impish smile the polar opposite of Moody's severe frown, "the ICW promised discreet diplomatic and military support in any of our international interests," James noticed that as he spoke, Laurence's gaze meandered across the table to Miriken, still fingering his rusty pistol.  "It was a win-win situation for everyone.  We accepted."  

"Did the troops know?" James asked, his mind flashing back to 1971.  As a boy, he had gazed at the ICW's full-page Daily Prophet ads for hours on end, wanting desperately to join the international peacekeeping force—riding out across the Vietnamese jungle to slay the giant American dragon of injustice, a dragon that, if Laurence and Moody were to be believed, was nothing but a carefully constructed travesty.  

"Not until they arrived in Hanoi," Moody said, his calculating eyes focused on James.  

"But that's… lying," James said.  The utter wrongness of Laurence's story curdled the contours of his conscience, coating the sides of his throat with sour bile, tasting sharply of regurgitated morality.  

"Yes," Laurence replied, without so much as blinking.  The side of his lip twitched upward as if he was fighting back a smile.  

"What about your honor?" James asked, downright offended by the American's devil-may-care reaction.  

"Honor," Moody cut in, his lilting Scottish brogue as hard as steel upon James's ears, "has no place in war."  

James's mind reeled with shocked outrage.  His sense of propriety kept screaming at him, told him that there was no way such a giant conspiracy could have ever been seriously considered by the ICW, let alone brought to fruition.  But he couldn't ignore the doubt taking root inside his own heart, shooting up boughs that bore apples utterly devoid of morality's sweet juice, strung instead, with the bitter liquor of cynicism.  

Did his father know?  

It was entirely too much for him to take in.  

"Once they heard," Moody continued, shooting James a venomous glance, "many of the troops wanted to desert.  We caulked up the fireplaces, killed the owls, and just on the off chance that one of our soldiers knew how to fly a Muggle helicopter, marched the boys to the middle of the jungle, well away from any modes of transportation, wizarding or otherwise."  

"Why?"  James asked, regarding Moody with even a visceral revulsion that far surpassed his previous dislike.  

"The Dark Lord was within our grasp and the stupid boys wanted to go home to their mothers.  One has to make certain sacrifices in a war—all for the greater good.  Think Potter," he said, eyes gleaming with a manic light, "what if Voldemort had been killed in 1971, think all of the lives that would have been saved, the broken families that would be intact, all the hope that would still be alive."  

James's voice was stony accusation incarnate.  "You didn't kill him in 1971."  

"When we finally discovered that the reports saying Voldemort was in Vietnam were nothing but a clever decoy to throw us off the scent, our boys had been in the country for nearly two weeks and had still not eliminated the imaginary American threat that was so important to the wizards back home."  

"Couldn't you have just fabricated another battle?" James sneered, lip curling in disgust.  

"Within a reasonable space of time," Moody replied.  "We sent the boys south towards the Mekong Delta, where the so-called massacre occurred.  No one had bothered to inform the American platoons, both Wizarding and Muggle, of our true mission.  When they saw us coming down from the North they assumed we were communist sympathizers working with the NVAs."  

James was shocked, "Why didn't you just tell them—"

Moody cut him off, "They didn't ask questions, Potter.  We were separated, fragmented—they were boys, not soldiers.  Hell, half of them didn't even know what a gun was, but they learned, and the ones that didn't…" Moody trailed off; there was a deathly silence.  Taking a breath, he began to speak once more, "We had cut off all means of communication with the outside to prevent the boys from deserting, but not even that could stop them now.  They skived off in droves.  Some got so helplessly lost in the jungle they died of thirst, exhaustion, or a thousand other indigenous ailments, but most were picked off by the American curse wizards or their Muggle counterparts.  It was chaos."  

Moody looked down at his hands, as gnarled and scarred as the rest of him.  "When I managed to set up a _Hablatus charm to contact the ICW for help I was told that there was nothing they could do.  If we wanted to get out we had to provide the wizarding public with the great victory they so desired."  _

"So you did," James said quietly.

"No, Potter," Moody said in a cold voice.  "We died."  

"But we were told—"

"I don't care what you were told," Moody spat.  "By the time the International Confederation of Wizards finally relented I had eleven boys left—eleven, Potter, out of one hundred.  If the ICW hadn't come, I doubt we would have lasted much more than a week.  There were so few of us left the Americans had ceased to pay much notice; it was the boys themselves that were dangerous.  Any of them would have killed his fellow survivor for his jacket, his gun—his bloody socks." 

"They told us," James began dazed, "they told us that the rest of the troops wanted to remain in Vietnam as humanitarian workers.  Most of them are still there."  

"All of them are still there," Moody interrupted him.  "Do you know why, Potter?  Because they can't go back."  

"But the families—"

"The ICW forges correspondence; the letters are always hopeful—uplifting.  People love to hear about happy things, especially in times as dark as these."  

"But what about the eleven who survived?"  

"What about them, Potter?  They had been through so much we knew they wouldn't talk, and even if they did," he said quietly, "who would believe them?  The eleven, the eleven boys that pulled through, I still know them all by name:  Wilkes, Dolohov, Pritchard, Rockwood, Warrington, Zabini, Malfoy, Travers, Lestrange, Mulciber, and Rosier."  

James drew a breath.  "Death Eaters."  

"All eleven are today known supporters of the Dark Lord.  The irony of it all is Voldemort did indeed drum up support in Vietnam during the summer of 1971… just not in the way we had anticipated."  

"You're a monster," James snapped, face red with self-righteous fury.  

"And you're too self-absorbed to even begin to make the hard decisions I have to make every day of my life," Moody retorted, managing to looked unruffled in the face of the younger man's disgust.  "Him," the Auror gestured to Laurence, "me, even you Potter—our personal well being, honor included, pales in comparison to the greater good."  

"Then why did you have him," James gestured at Miriken, for there was no longer any doubt in his mind that their meeting with Moody was not an act of random chance, "kidnap me?  Was that a step towards the greater good as well?"  His words were laced with a dangerous sarcasm.  

"I needed an official excuse to come to Moscow and repair the mess that made by two very young, inexperienced excuses for Aurors," Moody replied; his indirect reprimand of James stung Prongs like a slap in the face.  "You gave it to me." 

"I didn't give you anything," James snapped.  "And even if I did, I'll be damned if I ever again offer you so much as a Christmas card!"

"I took your visa," Miriken spoke up for the first time.  His thick accent caught James by surprise.  With a lurch, he realized it was the first time he had heard the Doctor speak in English.  

"What?"  James spluttered, hand traveling to the inside pocket of his jacket.  Miriken couldn't possibly have taken his passport; he would have noticed if it were gone.  

"Last night," Miriken repeated, his face cool and expressionless, "I sent it to England with a note of ransom—600,000 Galleons, if your father wishes your safe return."  

"You're going to kill me," James immediately thought of the worse possible outcome.  

"Don't flatter yourself," Moody snapped, and James didn't know whether or not to be relieved or offended.  "That's exactly what I came here to prevent.  The reason you have never been given the foreign assignment that you continually begged me for, Potter, besides the fact that you are not remotely qualified for such an operation, is that by virtue of your father's position, you are at a high risk whenever you are outside of England, where our spells and wards cannot protect you.  Here in Russia, you are a sitting duck.  I needed an excuse to come to Moscow and clean up the mess you'd made.  Your father would never dream of sending me while his precious son was so," Moody smiled condescendingly, "on top of the situation.  So I ordered Miriken, who has been my contact with the Soviet Union for quite a while, to create a situation in which you were at risk.  When he heard his son was in danger, Minister Potter deployed the best Auror at his disposal to play negotiator as," he smirked, "I knew he would."  

"Alastor has managed to talk me down to 300 thousand Galleons," Miriken said sarcastically, shooting a glance to his partner in crime.  "Half of which I am already owed."  

"And the other half belongs to the Auror Bureau in all but name thanks to all the damned budget cuts Potter has been making, reallocating funds from our coffers to the Department of Misinformation.  If you can't win a war, then at least make it look like you have a sporting chance…" he trailed off, muttering angrily to himself.  

James refused to take another snip at his family's honor.  "My father is a very capable leader," he said, visibly bristling.  

"Your father," Moody snapped, not even bothering to turn and look at James, "is a wartime minister with an approval rating of seven percent."  

"Ouch," Laurence added unhelpfully.  "Is that the real statistic?"  

James really couldn't think of anything to say so he sunk into a pout, glowering at the three men around him.  

"Well, there's a five percent margin of error," Moody said, sounding a little annoyed at the sudden interest in Minister Potter, however damning it might be.  "So the actual rating could be as low as two."  

"Or as high as twelve," James said through clenched teeth.  

Moody mocked exuberance.   "Things are really looking up roses, aren't they, Potter?" 

James was jolted from indignation into outright panic when the door swung violently open; it smashed against the opposite wall, heavy wood meeting cheap plaster with a horrendous bang.

----

February 12, 1979

The road to Manchester, Cheshire County, United Kingdom

There is a certain thrill in the open road:  whipping down rural lanes disrupting the pastoral peace—an idyllic lull that, in Ilona's opinion, was made to be broken.  The life of the socialite isn't very different from that of a nomad, wandering from casino to casino, resort to resort.  The ability to move at breakneck speeds when traveling from one location to the next was just one of the prerequisites of being a certified expert in the fine art of frivolity.  Yet, the diversion posed by the open highway escapes those summer socialites who laze around until their leaves turn red and they realize it is finally time to set aside the wandering life and commit the mortal sin of growing up.  

Ilona would never understand why Corrow had to go.  One moment he was at her side, playing doubles at squash and wagering mother of pearl chips at the baccarat tables, and then before she even knew it, her hand went bust.  She awoke one morning to find him dressed in a three-piece suit raving some nonsense about the investment possibilities of the diamond mines in his native South Africa, and without further ado… he was gone, his one way ticket to Durban ensuring him a permanent visa into the realm of adult responsibility.  

What a waste.  

She was glad to get the letter summoning her back to Malfoy Manor.  It wasn't that she particularly wanted to travel to Yorkshire, but she needed a distraction from Corrow and his capitulation to maturity.  He had been gone for a week and she still couldn't look at a baccarat table or a squash racquet without thinking of his face, picturing the smooth line of his chin, the dark mess of his hair—the entire package cumulating in the soft terrain of his lips, so often curving into a waxing smile, so often meeting her own…

All thoughts of Corrow vanished from Ilona's mind as a black shape whooshed rudely past her on the road; she pulled her Aston Martin into a sharp turn to avoid being hit.  The wheels of her convertible screamed as she slid dangerously towards the right, traveling so far to the side of the road that the hedge that created the barrier between highway and countryside smacked against her windshield.  Ilona's immediate inclination was to pull out her wand and start cursing everything in sight, but she wasn't in the mood for dealing with the Ministry's damnably dogmatic Improper Use of Magic Squad so she contented herself with narrowing her eyes, staring after the offending black shape.  It was moving too fast to be readily identified, obviously of a mind to infuriate her every chance it got.  Within moments it would round the bend in the winding country road and she would lose sight of it—

It is debatable whether or not curiosity killed the cat but utterly inarguable that it is the ultimate motivator.  Ilona's foot slammed down upon the gas.  Purring, her Aston Martin sprung into top form speeding down the street like a feline in heat.  

The black shape moved, turning around to glance at her.  It, or rather he, for as she got closer she could see that it was indeed a man, was perched atop a motorcycle, a trim ribbon of exhaust streaming out behind him like a banner.  His long hair flew free around his head in lieu of a helmet; in fact, the closest thing to protective headgear on his person was a pair of aviator sunglasses, two squares of brown glass that were currently standing between his gaze and her own.  She couldn't see his face to evaluate his looks, but this seemed utterly irrelevant in lieu of his bearing; there was a certain fire in his manner that caused her to gaze closer, intrigued.  Her stomach flipped excitedly as she realized that she wanted to catch him, not only to teach him a lesson for nearly running her off the road, but to show him a thing or two completely unrelated to punishment.  It didn't matter that she couldn't see his face, in her experience, men who rose motorbikes were either extremely attractive or middle-aged and in denial—and her stranger didn't carry himself like some old fogey trying unsuccessfully prove that it was still 1952.  He had spark, life; he radiated youthful energy that drew her like a moth to flame.  In the extremely unlikely event that her intuition was wrong and motorbike-man's appearance left much to be desired, she could always screw him with her eyes closed.  It had worked in the past.  But she was almost sure she wouldn't have to go to such lengths.  There was no way that her stranger, her fabulous, madcap, carefree stranger could be anything less than insanely handsome, even if it wasn't in the conventional physical way.  His magnetic speed and vitality would more than make up for a harelip or a disfiguring scar.  This man, whisking along helmetless at breakneck speeds, was everything Corrow should have been.  Although his glasses might obscure his appearance they could not mask his unspoken challenge, especially as he pressed his foot down upon the accelerator, causing his engine to growl, garnering the bike a fresh burst of speed.  

This was all the starting gun that Ilona needed.  She pounded her foot to the floor, blonde hair whipping behind her like a flag.  Her hands spun the wheel 180 degrees, her Aston Martin narrowly rounding a sharp turn just seconds after the man on the motor bike.  The Cheshire wind whistled into her ear like a new lover.  

The speedometer's needle moved further to the right:  one hundred twenty-five, one thirty, one forty—and she still was to be barely gaining on her stranger.  His bike's engine trumped every new burst of speed her Aston put forward, eating up the narrow road like a sailor in a whorehouse.  If she didn't know any better she would have guessed that magic greased the gears of his bike, just as it fueled those inside her Aston.  She had thought it impossible for mere oil and pistons to spawn such breakneck speeds.  One hundred forty, one fifty, one fifty-five—everything was a blur, everything except the front end of her car and the back of his bike, rudely slicing its way through the idyllic countryside, its sexy banner of exhaust a cape to her bull.  

Suddenly, he pulled a sharp left, the sudden movement causing Ilona to once again jerk her wheel 180 degrees and hold it there as her wheels moaned.  It took a few seconds for the Aston to render itself perpendicular to its previous position; she jammed her foot down impatiently on the accelerator once her car was ready, not wanting to lose any more time.  Her speed, which had dropped dangerously low in the turn, was now creeping back up, past one hundred to one twenty—one thirty.  It was only then that she realized that she had missed the turn to Manchester, and beyond that city, a quick county over, her father's home.  An instant of indecision gripped her, and she paused to wonder if she should abandon her chase of this elusive stranger on his beautiful bike.  

Then she noticed that her foot was still pressed doggedly to the floorboard, causing her Aston to zoom after the stranger.  She smiled; her subconscious had made up her mind for her and her father would have to wait.  She had come this far; and she'd rather be condemned to eternal purgatory listening to Lucius wax ecstatic about Minotaur fighting (or something equally mind-numbingly boring), than let this man get away with almost running her off the road.  Besides, it wasn't as if the old man was in any state to rage over her tardiness; her presence wasn't absolutely imperative until the fourteenth, which gave her a loose schedule of thirty-six hours to corner, catch, and metaphorically kill her stranger.  She'd bear this hunt through to fruition.  Her eyes narrowed as she focused them upon the man on the motorcycle; she wouldn't let this quarry slip through her fingers.  

The paving under her wheels turned to cobbles as she reached forward to downshift her car.  Her speed had dropped to a respectable eighty when the small whitewashed buildings of a pitiful village rose out of the countryside in front of them.

He slowed as well, although he was still going fast enough to cause a ruckus.  He could have kept to the side of the road and caused relatively little fuss, but instead, he bowled straight down the center, driving right through a gaggle of geese that had been pecking at the cobbles of the road, their goosey logic causing them to hope that solid stone would suddenly transform itself into something edible.  Their angry squawking echoed in Ilona's ears as she followed deliberately in her stranger's path, scattering the gaggle for the second time in a matter of instants.  She paid them no mind; her eyes were still focused on the tail of the stranger's bike.  

Then, without warning, the tail disappeared.  She was so surprised that she jammed her foot down upon the accelerator, zipping past the village church at nearly a hundred kilometers per hour.  By the time her foot had found the brake she had bypassed at least four side streets, any number of which he could have gone down… 

…Fifteen minutes later Ilona was almost ready to give up.  She had circled through the tiny hamlet at least five times, and although there seemed to be an overabundance of geese, grass, and, for some inexplicable reason, gardenias, there was no sign of her stranger.  Frowning, she leaned forward to set her foot to the accelerator… and stopped.  Because, there before her, glimmering like the Holy Grail of potential one-night trysts was a silver and black motorbike parked in a space made for a vehicle twice its size.  Ilona was initially surprised to see the lot so full, especially considering that she was in such a miserably small village.  Once she saw the hand painted sign hanging over the door portraying a deck of cards and a discarded lady's stocking, the popularity of the establishment that owned the parking spaces became its popularity became perfectly understandable.  Her stranger was frequenting The Merseyside Gentleman's Bar and Club—she found that amusing beyond belief.  The fact that he visited such a place meant one of two things:  he was either one of those middle-aged fogeys in denial, looking for a quick roll-around without the missus—or he was very, very bored.  Either way, he was a sitting duck, practically screaming for her to swoop in and work her magic.    

She moved her Aston forward to box his motorcycle in.  Unless his bike could fly, her stranger wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.  He may have won their little car chase, but she was the front-runner from here on out.  Smiling, Ilona turned off the ignition and slipped the keys into her purse, well aware that the true race had just begun.  

----

February 12, 1979

Just outside Liverpool, United Kingdom

The Merseyside Gentleman's Bar and Club

Jack of diamonds, seven of clubs, five of hearts, ten of spades and the six of clubs.  

Jesus, what a godawful hand. 

Sirius stared at his cards, wondering why it was his luck to get not ace, not king, not even queen, but jack high.  Of course, this was only the first go-round.  

 He quickly debated the pros and cons of discarding most of his hand and getting what essentially amounted to a clean slate or keeping a few of his miserable cards and making it appear to the rest of the table that he had something that he did not.  If he took that route, however, it was more than likely that his extra cards would turn into an albatross strung around his neck.  

Eventually, prudence won out over practicality and he tossed everything except for the Jack, which he kept on account of it being his highest card and beyond that, his favorite.  He had always fancied the Jack a bit of a debonair cad and, thus, felt a rather personal connection to the old chap.  

"Four," he said, trying to mold his face into something resembling a knowing smirk.  If he was going to bluff he may as well go all the way.  

He was rewarded with a second six, this time diamonds, two more jacks, which would give him a healthy springboard when paired with the one he already had, and the lone queen of spades.  

For some inexplicable reason, the queen of spades made him think of _her.  Very infrequently had Sirius ever seen a woman who played poker; even rarer was a woman who played poker in a "gentleman's bar."  Yet, when she had stepped through the small black door that cut their pub off from the rest of the village, all talk ceased.  Here was a woman—the opposite sex— entering their private sanctum of her own free will.  Smirking, she walked across their room as if she owned the pub, her short black skirt swirling around her hips as she pushed her large Audrey Hepburn sunglasses down the bridge of her nose.  Her thin blonde hair fell into her newly revealed face as she cut her way across the club, completely aware of and to Sirius's eye, rather pleased with the stir that she was causing.  There was no doubt in Sirius's mind that this was the woman from the road.  He had seen very little of her on the highway, except for a flash of blonde hair so it wasn't so much a physical recognition as it was a visceral connection.  They were inextricably linked by the thrill of the chase, animal energy crackling between them like flashes of heat lightning.   He could feel her eyes upon him and he could tell, without looking up, that her gaze was full of recognition.  She had come for him.  _

Trying to stay nonchalant, he kept his eyes focused upon the black material of her skirt, which soon proved to be entirely more trouble than it was worth.  She walked with a swivel in her hips that may have seemed contrived on other women; but for her it was as natural as breathing.  Giving up any pretense of apathy, Sirius allowed himself to unabashedly stare at her as she cut her way through the now silent pub towards his table.  Every single pair of eyes in the bar was focused upon her, and she didn't give a damn.  She had the gall to burst into a bloody Gentleman's club and act as if she owned the place.  On top of all that, she drove like a bloody madman.  And she was heading straight for him. 

He wasn't the least bit surprised when she arrived at his table, pulled off her sunglasses and spoke three fateful words, "Deal me in."  

That is how she came to be sitting across the table from Sirius, and although all she was holding in her dainty white fingers were five red and white cards, eyes riveted on her hand, face devoid of emotion, she was utterly distracting.  Maybe it was her black lace turtleneck, leaving little to his imagination, or the way her long blonde bangs fell into her eyes, veiling her gaze, but most likely, he mused, it was the way she knew that he was staring at her, knew but gave no sign, except for the way her lips twitched slightly upwards in the barest consideration of a smile.  

"Ante."  The single word jerked Sirius away from his contemplation of the woman and to the logistics of the game.  Besides the woman and the dealer, who abstained from play, there were two other gamblers, Julian, one of Sirius's numerous childhood acquaintances before he went to Hogwarts, who played Poker with as much caution as one would use to cross a fraying rope bridge, and, thus, made an unwanted habit of loosing horribly, and a big burly blond from Norway.  Sirius didn't know the Norwegian's name; in all of his time in Liverpool he had barely heard the man string more than three words together.  But whatever he lacked loquaciously, the Norwegian made up for in his card-playing ability.  Sirius could barely remember a night in which the Norwegian has gone home in the red.  

Reaching into his pocket, he dug out his rumpled wad of bills, all small denominations, and managed to untangle a five-pound note from the mess.  He had never understood the chintzy casinos that required a three or four-hundred pound ante; betting money like that would make him feel godawful about folding.  Not that Sirius ever folded, at least not while he still had some hope of bluffing his way out of whatever grave he had dug himself into.  He felt horrible about giving up, whether the price was five pounds or five hundred.  

Four five-pound notes were pushed into the center of the table and Sirius noted, with a small twinge of pride, that his was by far the most crumpled.  The woman, being on the dealer's immediate left, went first.  Without blinking she pushed another note into the pot.  

Sirius had to stare at it to realize that it was a twenty.  In one fell swoop, she had doubled the pot.  Julian, sitting to the woman's direct left, looked utterly constipated.  He stared at the twenty-pound note, eyes traveling to his hand, then back to the pot, and then to his cards once more.  Julian took a deep breath, fortifying himself, and for the briefest moment, Sirius actually thought that his friend would match the woman's bet, but then he tossed his cards down upon the table and announced in the manner of one more relieved that regretful.  "I fold!"  

Sirius, next in line, didn't even pause to think.  He slid in three fives, four ones and a goulash of assorted coins, effectively, albeit haphazardly, matching the woman's bet.  Digging through his pockets, he managed to find a rather dog-eared five-pound note, which he tossed into the pot.   After the woman's twenty, it lacked the dramatic effect it would have otherwise had, but Sirius wasn't about to wager his life savings.  

Sirius, unlike James and Peter, had never had very much money on hand during his Hogwarts years and now, even though ht had a steady, if relatively unimportant, job at the Auror Bureau, and, thus, cash to spare, he still felt somewhat guilty throwing away money on a game of cards.  He tried to reconcile it to himself, it was only twenty pounds, but then felt all the worse for his troubles because in his youth, twenty pounds had been quite a bit of money.  

But those twenty pounds could return to him threefold, provided that the Norwegian called his bet.  Now was not the time for second thoughts.  Second thoughts lead to nervousness and nervousness was a clear and narrow street towards poor playing, and there was no way in Gryffindor's name that Sirius would allow himself to be beaten by a foreigner or worse yet, a woman.  Taking a deep breath, Sirius pushed his guilt and doubt to the back of his mind.   Julian played with enough trepidation for the both of then.  Poker was meant to be played—and won—on gut instinct.  If there was one thing Sirius trusted, it was his own intuition.    

The Norwegian called, but Sirius noticed, with a knowing smile that he did not raise the bet.  He was playing cautiously, which could mean only one of two things:  the Norwegian was either waiting for the woman to dig her own grave, or he had a really shit hand.  By the pained look on the Norwegian's face, Sirius was willing to bet the latter.

Suddenly, Sirius began to have a bit more faith in his three Jacks.  

The woman had noticed the Norwegian's careful betting as well and she aimed a mocking smile at the blond man as she slid a fiver into pot, matching Sirius's bet, and then another bill, overstepping it.  Sirius glanced at it and his pulse quickened when he realized that it was another twenty.  

This was the point of no return, and she had posed a challenge that he'd look foolish not to answer.  So in one move, moving quickly so he would allow no room for regret, he called her bet.  Reaching for his rapidly dwindling wad of bills he pulled out a ten, which he added to the pot.  

Now everything rested upon the Norwegian, and although he kept his expression blank, Sirius could sense the aura of discomfort radiating out of the man's very pores.  It seemed like a very long time in which the Norwegian's eyes flickered from the pot to his cards and back again; it couldn't have been more than a few seconds however, when he added thirty to the pot, once again refusing to raise the tab.  

The woman was all too willing to take up the Norwegian's slack.  She matched Sirius's ten, as he knew she would, and then, glancing at the pot and pausing for one moment in which Sirius guessed she was doing some quick mental arithmetic, she added a twenty.  

The Norwegian's cards were on the table before Sirius could even glance at his own.  One opponent eliminated, the woman turned her eyes to Sirius, a small smile creeping up the side of her face.  

He called.  It really was too late to back out now.  Sirius was an impulsive player and he knew it; although his famed instinct was urging him on (with his pride bringing up the rear), he couldn't suppress the slightest twinge of doubt.  The woman seemed so self-assured, shelling out money as if it meant nothing to her.  She must have one hell of a hand or one mother of a bank account.  Sirius was hoping for the latter, but all things considered he had neither and, thus, would be unable to hold out like this much longer.  It wasn't every day that he wagered seventy pounds on a poker game.  "Show," he commanded, turning his gaze upwards from the pot to meet hers.  

She looked almost amused.  "You first."  He laid down his hand, the jacks, six and queen in plain sight, glancing up immediately to gauge her reaction, and through that, his fate.  Thanks to her itchy betting fingers, he could have just won himself a boatload of money.  

Whether she was defeated or the winner, she gave no sign as she silently began to lay down her cards, a six, another six, a queen, a queen…

Sirius inhaled sharply.  If she had two pair, then it meant that he took the pot—

…and finally, a third six.

"Full house," she said simply, directing her mocking smile towards him.  

But Sirius was too startled to notice her derisive look, for his mind was instantly whirling down a tangent that could prove to be the key to the entire poker game.  The woman won with three sixes and Sirius had one in his hand, which made four.  But he had possessed another six in his first hand, which he had discarded before betting had even commenced.  Four plus one made five.  

He looked up from the table just in time to see the woman's slinky form working its way through the smoke filled pub towards the bar.  Eyes narrowing, he got up from the card table and began to follow.  There was no deck of cards in the world with five sixes.  

----

"You cheated," Sirius said by way of greeting, sliding into a barstool beside the woman.  

She merely blinked at him.  "Excuse me?"  

He had the feeling that she had caught his accusation the first time around and was merely putting on a pretense of confusion.  Nevertheless, he repeated his salutation.  "You cheated."  

"No," she corrected, raising one blonde eyebrow.  "You lost and whether or not you want to be sore about it is not my affair."  

Sirius saw straight through her scorn.  "In this world," he persisted accenting each word with a jab of his thumb, "there is no deck of cards with five sixes."  

He could have sworn that he saw a glimmer of surprise in her silver eyes, but it passed quickly, glazed over by a sugary sheen of condescending amusement.  "I simply don't know what you are talking about," she said.  The tone of her voice achieved what Sirius would have previously thought impossible, making her confession of ignorance a jab at his own intelligence.

Taking a quick breath, Sirius began.  "You won with a full house, two jacks and three sixes.  Do you agree?"  

"I really don't see what you're getting at."  She raised an eyebrow in aristocratic annoyance, and despite her patronizing attitude, or if he really wanted to be frank with himself, on account of her patronizing attitude, Sirius continued.  

"Do you agree?" he repeated doggedly, purposefully ignoring her over-accentuated sigh of annoyance.  

"Yes."  Her voice was ripe with irritation.  "I won with a full house.  But I still don't see—"

"Yet," he said, cutting her off and enjoying every inch of her exasperated frown.  "I discarded one six and got another in return," Sirius said, ticking off the cards on his fingers.  "That's two.  You can count as well as I—that's five sixes."

Her reply was, if anything, unexpected.  "So?"  

"Five sixes," Sirius persisted, trying to wring a reaction out of her.  He had expected her to let loose a sudden burst of anger, or even a tearful confession, but apathy was the last thing he had anticipated.  "That's impossible."

"You said it yourself," she replied with a patronizing smile, "five sixes are simply impossible.  You must be mistaken."  

"No," Sirius said, dark eyes never wavering from her icy pale face.  "I know when I'm mistaken, whether I admit it or not.  There were five sixes in that deck."  

"How much," she asked carefully, a depreciating smile on her face.  "Have you had to drink?" 

"I should have run you off the road," he growled, glowering at her.  

She put on a face of mock offense.  "That's no way to talk to a lady."  

"You're no lady."  

She raised an eyebrow.  "Is that a threat?"  

"It's an insult."  

She smiled at him.  "If it wasn't for the central heating, I'd be shivering."  

A sudden thought hit Sirius, a wild impossibility that was so crazy, so utterly improbable that it had to be the closest thing to the truth.  "Magic," he said, more to himself than to the girl.  

"Come again?" she said, her face a mask of bored amusement.

"Magic," he repeated, now bringing his dark eyes up to meet her elusive gray ones.  

"I repeat," she said, smiling slightly.  "How much have you had to drink?"  

But the strength of his conjecture banished any clouds of doubt her reply may have otherwise thrown upon his theory.  "I don't know of a charm that could have had that effect," he continued, watching the patronizing smile on her face slide into the realm of genuine interest, "an illusion maybe, or perhaps you transfigured the card—but I'm not sure exactly how, especially without a wand," he broke off, the contemplative grin on her face confirming his suspicions.  "However you did it, I'm impressed."  

"As am I," she said, tilting her head slightly to the side, as if trying to get a better look at him.  "You're the only person between here and Monte Carlo to see through that parlor trick."  

"Then you?" he prompted.  

"Transfigured the card," she answered.  "It's relatively easy; you only have to change the print, from spades to hearts or," she added with a smile in his direction, "a nine to a six.  You're not changing the actual material of the card so it's relatively simple magic, not requiring a wand—" she broke off abruptly, gray eyes narrowing.  "How can I trust you?" 

"It's a bit late for that," Sirius replied, relishing her shocked expression for one short sadistic moment before dismissing her fears.  "No, I'm just kidding, you don't have to worry.  I want my money back, of course," he added, giving her a stern glance.  

She looked somewhat offended.  "I won it."

"That's debatable."  

Scowling, she reached into the pocket of the white leather jacket she had slung across her knees and pulled out a substantial wad of bills, obviously much more than their meager pot.  Sirius realized that the woman had been pulling her parlor trick on hapless Muggles all the way from Monte Carlo, and been compensated handsomely for the trouble.  The oft-ignored moral part of him felt mildly offended but the wicked Padfoot side of him was thoroughly impressed, and more than a little sore that he hadn't thought of the stunt himself.  He couldn't grudge her a bit of fun, especially when she was willing to reimburse him for it.  

"How much did you put in?" she asked.  

"One hundred pounds," he replied, upping the sum by thirty quid.  She could afford the loss. 

Carelessly, she thrust him the amount before slipping the money back into her jacket.  Then she turned to him, a small smile on her face.  "I'm Ilona Malfoy by the way."  

Sirius's head jerked upwards as if he had been slapped.  Malfoy… Malfoy… of course that was familiar, everybody knew the Malfoys, but Ilona specifically…  Oh yes, he remembered Ilona specifically, he thought with vehemence.  

By God, he remembered Ilona specifically.  

…February 12, 1975 

Hogwarts Quidditch Pitch

Gryffindor-Slytherin Match

Sirius was trying to watch the Quidditch game, but sandwiched between Peter and Remus that was a formidable task at the very least.  Peter was prattling on incessantly about how Sukie Pickiwiggs, a fellow Gryffindor fourth year, had her eye on him.  It seemed that whenever he looked up she was ogling him with her dreamy mooncalf eyes, and when he glanced back she'd giggle and look away and then, after a few seconds, when she thought it was safe again she'd resume staring.  "Gee whiz, Sirius, it just has to be love!"

Sirius didn't have the heart to tell Peter that he was taking Sukie to the Three Broomsticks the next Hogsmeade Weekend.  

Remus, pressed up against his other side, was not much better company.  Although he was usually bored out of his skull at a Quidditch match, Remus was making a valiant and truly heartfelt effort to enjoy the game, more, Sirius suspected, for James's sake than any genuine love of sport.  However, despite his best intentions, Remus just didn't have it in him.  Less than five minutes after Professor McGonagall, doubling as Transfiguration and Flying Instructor, and, thus, chief coordinator of the Inter-house Quidditch championship, blew the whistle signaling the start of play, Sirius felt a small pressure on his shoulder.  Remus had fallen asleep.  

_"Look at Potter, go!  It's hard to believe he's it's just his second year as Chaser; he flies as if he's been on the pitch all his life.  Potter passes the Quaffle to fellow Gryffindor Shikse, who moves towards the Slytherin goalposts and—ooh, that looked like it hurt.  Shikse takes a Bludger from Malfoy—she drops the Quaffle.  I can't believe it, Potter's going into a dive, he's trying to catch it—come on James, come on—no!  Slytherin in possession of the Quaffle.  Luftwaffe passes to Avery, who moves towards the Gryffindor side…"_

Sirius sighed; it wasn't as if his own motives for coming to the match were as commendable as Remus's well-intentioned, if somewhat lethargic, support of James.  And on that note, Sirius was of the firm opinion that James had entirely too much moral support already.  Lily Evans had rallied her entire gang of Gryffindor girls into action and now they were a regular bunch of suffragettes with Potter as their platform, screaming loudly and waving all sorts of brightly colored banners enchanted to sing catchy slogans, though this backfired somewhat as whoever had charmed the banners (Lily, Sirius guessed, as she was the only person outside of Slytherin who could match James when it came to Flitwick's class) was utterly tone-deaf and the banners sang in just the wrong keys, creating a discordant clamor utterly devoid of meter and measure to which the only discernable words were "Potter", "James", and "score".  Sirius allowed himself to feel thoroughly embarrassed for his friend's sake.  Although, after he let the humiliation sink in a bit, Sirius supposed that James would take Lily's antics as a compliment.  Stupid noble prat.

_"Avery is making headway up the pitch.  He has been an unquestionable asset to the usually talentless Slytherin team, and when he graduates this year he will be sorely missed.  As team captain, Avery has made some very valuable finds, including those two sirens of the Quidditch pitch, fellow seventh years Malfoy and Goyle, Slytherin's Beaters and the only females on the team.  Just this last summer, Avery was ranked in Quidditch International Digest as one of the top amateur players in Europe—I believe he was number four, with one being of course Beauxbaton's legendary Keeper Coco LeBon, and the number two slot going to our very own Chaser James Potter…"_

It wasn't that Sirius objected to the idea of giving James moral support; he was rooting his friend on as much as the next Gryffindor; he just had other ulterior motives for attending the match.  See, Sirius had always fancied himself a bit of a bookie.  

"What are the odds?"  

Sirius looked up from Peter, who was still mooning over Sukie, to see a sixth year Hufflepuff he didn't know, which was a very rare occurrence indeed.  Sirius often found that he could walk clear from one end of the great castle to the other and know the names of every single person he came across, from the smallest first years to the most imposing upperclassmen.  "Currently?" he said lazily, appraising the Hufflepuff.  He looked like a rather nervous fellow, with trembling hands and red cheeks.  Sirius decided he would give him the benefit of the doubt and attribute his affectations to the February wind.  

"Yes currently," the Hufflepuff snapped, looking rather annoyed at Sirius's cheek.  

Sirius felt rather surprised that the Hufflepuff was even betting.  Aside from their admittedly undeserved reputation as boring bumps on a log, it was not very often that a Hufflepuff, or a Ravenclaw for that matter, involved themselves in the infamous Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry, even in something as trivial as betting on a Quidditch match.  The badger and the eagle more often preferred to stay in the dorms and pray that they didn't get swallowed by the lion or stung by the serpent.  "Three to one," he said, continuing as the Hufflepuff dug into the pocket of his robes for a spare Sickle, "but all bets closed when the match started."  

_"And Potter is certainly living up to his reputation as he flies in from the side—Avery swerves to miss a Bludger fired by Johnson, oh, he drops the Quaffle!  It's about time—Potter catches it of course and passes to fellow chaser Dewey.  If there's one thing I like about James Potter, it's that he's a team player.  Dewey takes the Quaffle across the field—Oh watch out!  Would you look at that!  Dewey narrowly manages to avoid a Bludger hit by Malfoy by throwing herself into a brilliantly executed starfish-on-a-stick, though I'm not sure it was quite intentional as that is usually a Keeper position…"_

"Oh come on," the Hufflepuff protested, his cheeks reddening as his annoyance grew, "from what I've heard you're a reasonable guy.  Cut me some slack."  

"Sure, I'll cut you some slack," Sirius said amiably, "next match."  

"Listen to the man," Peter added unnecessarily, earning himself a disparaging glance from both Sirius and the Hufflepuff.  

The Hufflepuff turned back to Sirius, a pitiable expression on his red face.  "Please, I have a girlfriend—"

Peter muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Me too!"  

Sirius allowed himself to feel mildly guilty before turning back to the Hufflepuff, who was continuing with his tale of woe.  "Valentine's Day is next Monday and if I don't get her something expensive, that's it for me."  He drew his finger across his throat to further illustrate the tight situation he was in.  "The only thing is I'm low on coins; see, I don't have the money to buy her something really nice, or really anything at all, and—"

"I'm your last hope," Sirius finished for him, appearing quite sympathetic to the older boy's plight.  

"Exactly!" the Hufflepuff replied, a relieved smile spread across his ruddy face.  

"Next time," Sirius said with a cheeky grin, "choose a more reliable last hope."  He waited for one moment, watching the Hufflepuff's face steadily change from one of relieved pleasure to abject shock before tacking on an epilogue to his referendum.  "Just kidding.  How much to you want to wager?"  

"Six Galleons, fourteen Sickles, and a Knut," a voice belonging to neither the Hufflepuff, Wormtail, or Moony shot from somewhere behind Sirius's left shoulder.  

_"Potter in possession of the Quaffle—here come the three Slytherin Chasers in the classic, unimaginative Hawkshead formation; it looks as if Potter is trying to outfly them, come on James—no!  Avery swerves ahead to cut him off while Messerschmitt and Luftwaffe come in from either side—that's blatant stooging!  And would you look at that?  When you think Slytherin can sink no lower—Luftwaffe punches Potter in the nose so Avery can grab the Quaffle—the cheating bastards!"_

"No one asked you, Snape," Peter snapped, leaping to his feet, and yipping like an attack Lhasa Apso.  

Sirius's reaction was almost as instantaneous.  Temporarily ignoring the Hufflepuff he leapt to his feet, jarring Remus from the world of sleep to that of the living in the process.  "What are you doing here, Snape?" he snarled, face contorting into any angry sneer.  

"Placing a bet," Snape replied, his offhand manner only serving to infuriate Sirius more.  

"What if we don't want your bet, huh?" Peter snipped.  

Both Snape and Sirius ignored the smaller boy.  "The bets are closed," Sirius said between clenched teeth.  

"I'm not betting on the game, _Black," Snape said, smiling his nasty scornful smile and showing all of his already yellowing teeth in the process.  He looked as if Christmas and all of its festive trappings had come early; it's not every day that one manages to thoroughly incense Sirius Black.  _

"Then what are you betting on, _Snape?"  Sirius spat, twisting the other boy's name into a snarl, with all the raw vehemence of an explicative.  _

"I bet six Galleons, Fourteen sickles and a Knut," the Slytherin said, holding up his small pouch of money, "that James Potter falls off of his broom before the end of the match."  

McGonagall blows her whistle; it's about time!  Hopefully Potter will remain in the game—it's only a bloody nose, James.  Ah yes, McGonagall has awarded him a penalty shot, and Potter makes towards the Slytherin goalposts—look who is doing a starfish-on-a-stick now?  Ha, ha, take that Avery!  Potter scores, 10-0 Gryffindor!"

"You're kidding—James would never in a million years fall off of his broom!"  Peter exploded as the Gryffindor stands erupted into cheers above him, celebrating James's goal.  Sirius could hear Lily screaming herself hoarse a few rows above them.  Sirius hadn't seen her that happy since he had given Lily her first kiss two years before behind Herbology Greenhouse One, long before Prongs had even realized that there was more to girls than cooties and pigtails.  "He's the best Chaser Hogwarts has ever seen since—" he stammered, loosing steam mid-proclamation, "since Godric Gryffindor himself!"

"That is somewhat debatable," Snape sneered, shooting Peter an icy stare, "as Gryffindor lived in 900 AD, before the invention of Quidditch."  Wormtail sank back into his seat like a turtle slipping down under the side of his shell, thoroughly chastened.  

"No," Sirius said firmly, remaining staunch under Snape's scorn.

"No what, Black?" Snape snapped.  "Don't want my dirty money?  Why will you take the Hufflepuff's then?  It's a free country, didn't you know?"  

Remus, always the populist, spoke up for the first time.  "He does have a point, Sirius."  Padfoot shot Remus a grateful stare that caused his eyebrows to constrict and his lip to curl into a snarl; Remus shrugged.  "Well he _does," he said, with an apologetic note in his voice.  _

"Gryffindor in control of the Quaffle.  They're on a roll now as Potter passes it to Dewey who chucks it to Shikse, who drops it to Potter as they head for the Slytherin goalposts, now look at how they move as one cohesive unit.  Do you see that, Avery?  You should be taking notes…" 

"If I was to accept your bet," Sirius said between clenched teeth, feeling utterly betrayed, "who else would enter your pool?"  

"Me!" the Hufflepuff chortled.  Sirius felt his heart sink; his last excuse to bar Snape had been stripped away.  "There is no way that James Potter is going to fall off of his broom before the end of the match."  

Snape began, turning to the Hufflepuff.  "If we're in such agreement—"

"Disagreement," Sirius interrupted, determined to be as pugnacious as possible.  "The whole point of a bet is that you disagree."  

"If we are in such _agreement," Snape said, over accentuating his last word, "we can avoid Black altogether.  Let's shake on it."  _

"Fine by me," the Hufflepuff said, smiling amiably.  But as soon as his hand closed around Snape's a gigantic crack of ball meeting bat was heard and moments later a wild yell swept over the entire stadium.  

_"And that was a Bludger from Malfoy—would you look at that, I never thought I'd see the day!  Potter's down, he's falling, he's falling fast—he's off his broom, which continues to fly, straight through the Slytherin goalposts; too bad it isn't a Quaffle…"_

"You bastard!" the Hufflepuff yelled, rounding upon Snape.  "You fixed it!  You fixed it with Malfoy!"  

Sirius didn't even wait to hear Snape's reply, for he launched himself upon the other boy and it was only much later that he was extracted from the flurry of flailing limbs, kicking legs, and flying fists by a red-faced Professor McGonagall, who awarded them both a detention for their troubles.  

For the next few weeks, Sirius exclusively blamed Ilona Malfoy for his punishment and James's injury.  He perfected his evil glower and utilized it at every possible opportunity, namely glaring at Malfoy in the halls as she passed.  He spent long hours contemplating exactly what he would like to do to her if he ever got his chance, and for once, his fantasies were far from amorous.  He was on the brink of constructing small wax dolls of Malfoy and poking them periodically with sharp shiny objects when new battles with the forces of Slytherin surfaced.  These distractions steadily turned into full-time diversions and as suddenly as it had appeared, Sirius's adolescent animosity against Malfoy faded fully from the forefront of his mind.  

Until now.  

Not only was Ilona Malfoy far from a common name, she possessed the Beater's cold slate eyes, her thin tow hair, and her trademark derisive smile.  Besides, only a Slytherin would cheat so shamelessly at cards.  There was no way around it.  It had to be her.    

Between the spell cast by those icy gray eyes and that tiniest of smiles that told him, despite their short acquaintance, she knew more about him that he did himself, he couldn't find himself bothered to hold an unjustified grudge about a small misunderstanding over Quidditch.  

"Sirius," smiling broadly he extended a hand, which she took; the strength of her grip matched his own.  "Sirius Black."  

"Well?"  Ilona blinked at him, obviously expectant.  

"Well what?" he replied.

"Now that you've robbed me of my money, aren't you going to buy a poor girl a drink?"

----

By the time her drink had been bought, and drunk, and then bought again, most of the evening had past, left lying unattended in the bottom of almost-drained bar glasses and underlying their careless flirtation.  Even his grasp couldn't keep her from stumbling as she stepped into the nearest puddle, the city lights painting red and yellow stripes across the rain-splattered parking lot.  

He made a wild grasp for her arm, but then stumbled himself, hating to reach out blindly to grip the nearest street lamp for support; her derisive laughter echoed in his ears.  

"You're drunk," she said, still managing to sound accusatory despite the fact that she was as sloshed as he was.  

"And you're a cheat," he retorted automatically, taking a shaky step away from the street lamp to walk straight into the far more welcoming repose of her arms.  "But when I wake up in the morning, I'll be sober."  

"Is that such a good thing?" she mouthed, the city lights staining her face blood-red.  "Have you ever thought that sobriety was just a poor excuse for real life?"  

With those words ringing in their ears they ambled over to her Aston Martin.  She opened the side door with the slight click of a key; she slipped into the wide bucket seat, the chair's soft leather sticking to the naked skin of her lower thigh as she pulled the release lever, pushing the chair down.  He clambered up, on top of her, up atop that petal-soft skin and that hard leather seat, her arms twining about his neck, pulling him close with so much urgency that her fingernails dug into his skin.  The incisive pain was a far cry from the soothing catharsis of conventional romance.  

"I don't think," Sirius muttered his voice husky and breathless.  He spoke into her silver hair; its tangled locks were made red by the harsh light of the street lamps.  "I just do." 

"You're like me," she replied, her grip tightening fervently around his waist.  "Sobriety isn't life, this," she squeezed him so tight that her nails dug into the flesh of his flank, "this _is.  Real existence happens when there are no limitations—"_

"No rules—" he breathed as she laid her hands upon his chest, the rain soaking them both as she hooked her thumb under the neck of his T-shirt and pulled him close.  

"Only then can anything important happen."  

Her heady smell was as intoxicating as the liquor they had consumed hours earlier.  Her lips met his for one instant, two and then three… four, five which stretched into many, and then broke as she turned her head away, sliding his hand under the band of her skirt.  Yet, like the catalyzing drink, the aftertaste of her kiss burned his throat, weakening and fiery at the same time, nullifying the senses and heightening his awareness in one single stretch of instants.  

This isn't life, Sirius.  

Her lips burned a fiery trail down his collarbone as her fingers slid under and up the thin material of his T-shirt, their light touch as biting as the kiss of cigarette butts melting the skin, blazing, burning, branding—but for whom? 

Branding her as his?

No.

Him as hers?

And the answer was as clear and as real to him as the touch of her lips against his ears, whispering, whispering wicked somethings in a language he couldn't even recognize, let alone decipher, for when she had learned her foreign ABCs, he had been roaming the deserted warehouses and back alleys of Liverpool, running his fingers across the chain link fence that separated the factories from the world, often knicking himself on a loose piece of metal and then his fingers would bleed, oh how they'd bleed, as red as the light spilling across the pale canvas of her face as she marked him like a bitch hound and he let himself be claimed, hands playing the symphony of desire across her skin, a concerto he thought he had known by heart until she had cheated her way into his with her triple sixes, coupling pleasure with pain, and she—her fingers digging into his back and her lips leaning towards his—was so raw, so intense, so _alive that everyone seemed, in comparison, a pale fantasy.  And even as the rain poured down, drenching them both with nature's maternal tears, his lips met hers.  And even as they pulled apart, a bit of her still lingered upon his mouth, like the juice of Adam's forbidden fruit.  And he knew then, like Eve and her consort, their fates were inexorably bound.  For who can doubt the sanctity of original sin?_

"Let's get married," she whispered.

His reply was coupled with a breathless laugh.  "Why?"

"Why not?" 

Her grin only widened when she saw the mirror image of her intent reflected in his dog-brown eyes.

----

Sirius had grown up in a tenement house on Liverpool's west side.  Most of the apartment belonged to his father, though he had delegated one room to Sirius's Great Aunt who was prematurely senile thanks to tertiary syphilis and therefore not much help to anybody, least of all herself.  The tiny family moved to the tenement from Manchester when Sirius was three just after his mother, his red-haired laughing-eyed mother, ran off with the pastor of Our Lady's Church of the Perpetual Conception after a clandestine affair in the confessional booths.

The tenement was a tiny old place; the filthy windows and chipped brick rarely saw anything but a weak diluted daylight, as they constantly fell under the shadow of an old factory which stood across from the Black's residence, taking up the entire block.  Around the turn of the century, when the mill's walls had been freshly painted and its equipment cutting edge, it must have been state of the art, but those Halcyon days were long gone.  The old factory stood dark and derelict, its whitewash peeling as the numerous machines stood vacant, wanting for a hand.  Still the plant persisted, belching dark clouds of smog into the Liverpool sky, more out of habit than any misplaced faith in the power of progress.  When he was in a pensive mood, which usually happened when he had had too much to drink, Sirius's father would lay a hand on his shoulder and tell him how bloody lucky they were, for fortune had blessed them by giving them solid bodies to go out and work in their solid jobs and the return to their solid home where they sit and could eat their solid food, living out their solid lives one day at a time.  However dirty, however hopeless tenement life seemed, it was stable, unchanging, and certain—the joyless future was simply a continuation of the bleak past.  Sirius's father was a factory worker as was his father before him and _his sire as well.  There was little doubt in the elder Black's mind that Sirius would end up working in the mill until he was ransomed from the assembly line by his own son's young body.  Although the future seemed drear, Sirius's father said it was better than Derry, the Black family home before either of them were born, where their forefathers were forced to squat and steal, having nothing to call their own.  Not that the Blacks were currently removed from the world of squatters and thieves:  the house three down from Sirius's own was occupied by a come-and-go band of youngsters with limbs too thin and joints too old and bloodshot eyes as wide as saucers.  None of them ever stayed for too long.  _

Sirius had always been the sort of kid who told all the other children the truth about Father Christmas, or the place where babies really came from.  He supposed he had always credited this lack of naïveté to growing up, literally and figuratively, in the shadow of a factory.  Adulthood had always been looming, not only in the derelict building across the street, but in the way his Great Aunt's eyes glazed and rolled back into her head as she gurgled inanely, powerless to control her own movements; reality was present in his father's face, grayish-white from a job that commenced at six in the morning and lasted well into the evening, long after the sun dipped behind the western horizon.  Sirius had never had the luxury of childhood innocence; at a very early age, he had been forced to come to terms with the fact that some people had money and others—example: his father—did not, but the true extent of some individual's wealth had never struck him until the Easter holidays of his second year at Hogwarts when he had first gone home with James.  Up until that moment he had clung to the illogical childlike hypothesis that people with wealth had very nice tenement houses with intact windows, uncracked walls, and water that came on regularly when you turned the tap.  

The Potter's estate was definitely more than just a nice tenement.  In Sirius's best estimation, he could fit his entire neighborhood times three into the front lawn alone.  The mansion itself, taking up a modest 14,937 square meters of the estate's fifteen total acres was a lavish structural confection full of marble friezes, vaulted ceilings, and every other edificial frivolity one could possibly imagine and then some.  The house had no set architectural style; according to James it was a textbook example of the Baroquesqe-Panneoclassical-Mannerist movement, which had been popular sometime between the years of 1901 BC and 1902 AD.  Translated into layman's terms this meant nothing more than that the architect designing the Potter's home had been drunk, stoned, or any combination thereof when he drew up the blueprints and, thus, created a mismatched edificial monstrosity composed completely of the worst aspects of every single architectural school since the day when some old curmudgeon looked down from the clouds and proclaimed, "Let there be flying buttresses!"  Sirius's favorite room was the Neo-Serf Hall of Mirrors, a corridor in the style of Versailles's most famous chamber… with a waddle and daub roof.  

In short, James's home was where old architectural styles went to die.  

Surprisingly, the Potters turned a blind eye to their manor's deficiency, treating it rather like an old uncle who, although admittedly eccentric, was, on the whole, very well loved.  If any visitor was foolhardy enough to make a comment about the mansion that was less than ecstatic, the Potters would treat it as an insult directed towards a member of the family.  Discussing the mansion with any of the Potters was not worth the trouble, especially for Sirius, who had as much tact as a dead fish.  He had learned that a pissed-off Potter was a royal pain in the left metatarsal and, thus, tried to avoid one at all costs.  

Despite its rather haphazard design, Sirius had been absolutely bowled over by the sheer majesty of the Potter's estate upon his first visit.  He remembered when James showed him into the front entry hall:  a grand open-air atrium in the style of Imperial Rome, but with granite gargoyles sitting atop every pillar.  Sirius, who accepted Hogwarts's size and grandeur as institutional, had never though that a personal residence could be so majestic.  Real people weren't allowed to own pillars.  

Architectural frippery aside, he was awed out of his socks by the sheer size of the house.  It seemed to run on for miles upon miles; his own residence could fit into the atrium alone with plenty of room to spare.  Sirius walked over to one of the imposing marble pillars and laid his hand upon it, just to try and prove to himself that it was, indeed, real.  

"What's the matter?" James asked, laughing at his loquacious friend's loss for words.  "Haven't you seen a house before?"

Sirius looked up into the brilliantly blue Devonshire sky before speaking.  The hulking form of one of the numerous gargoyles blocked the midday sun's intense glare.  "Not like this," he replied, breathless with awe.  The gargoyle, sensing a visitor, tilted its stony head and sent Sirius a mischievous wink in greeting.  

As a Muggle-born, not yet completely familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the wizarding world:  namely, inanimate objects that refused to stay stationary, the wink had scared Sirius halfway out of his skin, which he realized, in retrospect, was probably the gargoyle's intent.  He flat-out refused to go into the atrium for days, much to James's amusement.  

But whatever fear the Potter estate had inspired in Sirius seemed benign compared to the gothic monstrosity currently perched on the far horizon like a falcon, ready to swoop in screaming for the kill.  Sirius crossed his arms over his chest, shivering even though he was not cold, "This is where you live?"  

Ilona raised one pale eyebrow as she pulled her white Aston Martin into a tight left turn, wheels just skimming the edge of the dirt road.  "It's just a house."  

Malfoy Manor was defiantly more than just a house.  It was seated at the crest of a small hill, rising out of the moorland like a wave that had just passed its pinnacle, already arching forward to crash upon the shore.  The road that led to the Manor, a slender ribbon of brown in the wash of gray moorland, was so ill-tended that there may as well have not been a road for all the use this one had got.  As they approached Ilona's house the dirt road evolved into a gravel driveway rimmed by hedges that had once been proud and tall but now stood hunched and malformed by years of harsh weather and regular neglect.  A rusty iron fence ran the length the property, and whatever defense it might provide against intruders didn't carry over to the encroaching heath, which had already consumed its wrought iron spikes.  

On either side of the main portcullis stood the statues of two young girls, dressed lightly in the Roman style; their black marble tunics were blown askew by an invisible stone wind.  Lichen coated the angel wings that stood upon their backs while their outstretched hands were chipped, painfully empty in a dual pieta.  They put Sirius in mind of mausoleum angels, statues that stood at the gateways of tombs, the silent guardians of the dead.  He shuddered.  Sirius wasn't particularly afraid of pain, or suffering, or even death; it was burial itself that set him on edge.  He despised the notion of being entombed in a graveyard; he couldn't stand the idea of spending eternity enclosed, whether it be in a coffin under six feet of moldy earth or in a tomb, behind six inches of solid stone.  He loathed the idea of confinement.  

The manor's front gate had rusted open, the swinging doors choked into stasis by a tangle of bracken and thorns.  Welded overtop the portal beyond the reach of the hungry heath was the phrase _Dulce et decorum est pro familia mori.  There was little doubt in Sirius's mind that those words, cut from iron to stand for eternity, would outlast the fence itself.    _

As Ilona gunned her car up the steep slope at a ridiculously fast speed, Sirius was unable to turn his eyes to anything but the Manor itself, growing ever larger until it took up his entire field of vision, filling it with haphazard spires and arrow-slit windows that were terrible in their gothic splendor.  The home never seemed to end; its gray walls progressed across the heath into eternity.  It appeared to Sirius an ageless house, one that was never built, existing before the dawn of time and continuing long after the inevitable day when the heath would wither to dust and the world crumble down into rubble.  Yet the rational part of his mind knew that this structural immortality was but an idle fantasy, for as they approached the Manor it was easy to see that the "ageless" walls were already covered with a faint splattering of mold, the harbinger of decay.  Ilona pulled the car to a screeching halt.  

Strangely enough, it was the heavy mahogany door, organic, and thus subject to the age-old law:  ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that was holding strong against the encroaching heath, for it bore no mark or blemish.  Sirius got out of the little Aston Martin, the click of his slamming door shattering the silence that hung over the Manor like a burial shroud.  Ilona, flat-out ignoring the somber air, brushed right by him, making for the door.  He could only follow.  

The stone surrounding the portcullis was carved in the same manner as the twin statues at the gates, only these mausoleum angels had their arms stretched high above their heads, effortlessly supporting a banner hewn in polished granite that read:

LUCIUS MALFOY—1801

"Who is Lucius Malfoy?" Sirius asked, gesturing towards the carving.  

"I don't know," Ilona snapped, obviously annoyed with Sirius's awe towards the Manor.  "Someone long dead and buried."  She brushed past him to grab the iron door handle.  Pulling it open viciously, she gestured for him to enter the Manor.  "You would think that you've never seen a house before," she snapped, unknowingly echoing James Potter.

"I haven't," Sirius answered, ignoring his companion's obvious chagrin as he stepped into the entry hall.  "Not like this."  And it was true, for if the Potter's mansion was an eccentric old uncle, Malfoy Manor, despite its derelict appearance, was the unquestioned patriarch ruling over its stretch of desolate moorland with a hard and domineering hand.  He had never before seen a building with such a palpable air of power; James's whimsical home couldn't even begin to compare.  Sirius gazed upwards, feeling awestruck and unnerved all at once.  He had never been in a house that seemed so malevolently _alive.  _

Ilona, who had neither the patience to tolerate Sirius's amazement towards her home nor the good nature to indulge his curiosity about it, strode towards the stairs, purposefully ignoring his childlike amazement.  "Look around if you're so interested," she snapped, obviously annoyed.  "I'm going to my room to change—hopefully you'll be sentient by the time I return."  

"Alright," Sirius replied, more than a little preoccupied.  Normally, he would be a bit put off by her sudden albeit impending disappearance, but the Manor had enchanted him with its Gothic spires and mysterious air and he could think of little else. 

Ilona paused mid-departure, shooting Sirius an appraising glance.  "Is that all you have?" she asked, a scornful tinge to her tone.  

"All I have what?" Sirius tore his eyes away from the Manor to take a cursory glance down at himself, wondering a bit defensively what she was talking about.  

"All you have to wear?"  She was obviously annoyed at not being immediately understood the first time.  

"Er…" Sirius opened his arms, displaying his denim jacket, mismatched jeans, and ratty blue T-shirt.  "Yes.  It wasn't as if I had time to pack a case," he added, a touch of sarcasm in his tone.  It was true, though.  Last night he had just thought that he was going out for a few hands of poker and a round of drinks.  In Ilona he had gotten much more than he had bet initially upon.  

"You have to look decent tomorrow," she said, glowering at him distastefully.  "Maybe you could wear something of Lucius's…"

Sirius's understood that her appraisal was coming off as somewhat of an underhand insult, but he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt instead of responding in kind.  "I looked this way last night," he replied, smirking at her, "and it wasn't too indecent for you then."  

She didn't even crack a smile.  Staring at him with eyes so cold he felt as if they could turn summer rain into stormy hail.  Feeling somewhat guilty despite the fact that, as far as he could tell, he had done nothing wrong, unless a good-natured joke was to be considered a sin, "What's tomorrow?"  He asked, a note of apology in his voice. 

"My father's funeral," she said matter-of-factly.  

Sirius felt suitably sobered.  "Oh… you're not kidding, are you?"  

"No," she said tartly, "I'm not.  You think I'd come home for the fun of it?  Yorkshire is nothing short of miserable 365 days a year.  I spend my time in France, which not only has decent weather but good gambling and that is more than I can say for merry old England."  

"I'm sorry," Sirius said, a little taken aback by her sudden tirade.  

"Don't be."  She replied, "England can't help herself."  

"No," Sirius shook his head, even more confused.  "No, I'm sorry about your father."  

"Then you're the only one," she replied, a deep undercurrent of bitterness running through her tone.  Sirius really couldn't think of anything to say to that, so the silence hung uncomfortably until she spun on her heel and strode up the stairs, presumably to change.  

And he was left alone in the entry hall of what was doubtlessly the most impressive home he had even entered.  The floors were solid hardwood, gleaming as if they had just been spit-shone, which, Sirius supposed, they probably had.  He was standing a few meters away from what looked like a genuine Persian rug.  Its black and red fibers were shot with gold, and the whole affair looked no less than six inches thick, running the length of the entire hall.  A rich crimson covering that contrasted impeccably with the colors in the rug coated the walls.  Taking a tentative step forward, Sirius reached upwards, his fingers brushing against the wallpaper.  It was real velvet, a floral design burnt into the heavy maroon folds.  His eye traveling down a line of velvet flowers, Sirius's gaze rested upon a mirror, slightly fogged with age, resting in a solid gold frame that was at least than four centimeters thick.  Catching sight of his reflection he squirmed a bit.  With his long hair, denim jacket, and grubby blue T-shirt (which was further enhanced by several small holes forming along the neckline), he felt more out of place than he had in his entire life.  Entering Malfoy Manor was like entering another world, a world of expensive Persian rugs and white Aston Martins, a world characterized by 15 acre estates where real people did indeed own pillars, a world he had not yet seen eye to eye with.  He doubted that he ever truly could.  Sirius jerked his hand away from the lush velvet wallpaper, eyes flickering up nervously to see if his fingers had left a stain.  

A sudden movement caught his gaze and pulled it back to the gold-framed mirror.  Behind his own grubby appearance, the glass showed a door that was slightly ajar on the far side of the hall.  If he squinted, Sirius could make out the room beyond.  It was a musty sort of parlor, done up in somber black satin.  Sirius couldn't help but wonder if the room was always decorated this way or of the mournful décor was just for the funeral.  Sitting a few paces away from the door on top of a lean mahogany table was an unmistakable coffin, lying in state before the time came to lie forever in the hard Yorkshire earth.  The case could only contain Ilona's father.  The hint of movement in the room, the very thing that had drawn his gaze to it in the first place, came not from the ostentatious black drapes or the slim wooden coffin but from the room's single inhabitant, his silvery blond hair the only patch of light in the dark parlor.  As Sirius watched, the man took a deep drag on the cigarette he was holding carelessly between his fingers.  He exhaled slowly; the smoke drifted up and around his blond hair before dispersing into the silent air.  The man's eyes were focused straight ahead of him at the motionless coffin as he once again raised the cigarette to his lips and then let it drop.  His manner was accusatory and apathetic at the same time, eyes as gray, as empty as the cloud of smoke hovering about his head.  

"I see you've met Lucius."  He felt Ilona's presence behind him before he heard her words, sliding into his ear like the caress of a new lover, sending a shiver down his spine.  

Sirius did not reply, his eyes still riveted upon the blond who either hadn't noticed their presence or chose to ignore it, still staring pointedly at the open coffin.  Sirius had the sense, however, that the man wasn't really looking at the coffin for its own sake as much as it was there, something for his eyes to fix upon.    

Ilona waited for a moment before letting loose one high laugh.  It was impossible to suppose that the man couldn't have heard her but he showed no sign of recognition, remaining stock still, fingers fixed around his rapidly dwindling cigarette.  

Sirius was so surprised by her reaction that he wrenched his eyes away from the man for the first time, and focused his gaze upon her.  She had indeed changed, putting off her black lace shirt in favor of a pearly grey sweater, the long neckline slipping down between her breasts.  Although it was just made of wool, the jumper's quality was obvious; Sirius was willing to bet that it easily cost more than everything he was wearing put together.  Probably paid for with all of the money she had won cheating at cards, he thought, trying to shake off the feeling of inadequacy that had settled over him like a wet blanket ever since he had crossed the Manor's threshold.  Somewhere between changing and returning to the front hall, Ilona had found an ornamental sword.  Judging by the hooks on the hilt, Sirius supposed that she had pulled it off of the wall somewhere.  She was holding it lazily in her right hand, the razor sharp point dangling listlessly in the luxurious carpet.  Still staring at the blond smoker she laughed yet again; her eyes were void of mirth.  "What's so funny?" Sirius snapped, half-surprised by his own intense reaction.  The sight of the man, locked in his own solitary staring contest had somehow set him on edge and this inexplicable reaction disconcerted him even more.  Once again, he was painfully aware of the stench of decay that hung over Ilona's manor like a parent chaperone, holding all of it residents apart with a meter stick, pointed at both ends.  

"Lucius," she replied easily, her eyes traveling over his shoulder to rest upon the blonde man.  A small, depreciating smile crept across her painted lips.  "Good old Lucius."

"Your lover?"  Sirius asked, aware that Ilona was no longer looking at him, but staring over his shoulder.  Her smile slipped off her face like water dripping out between cupped hands, replaced by a look of distressed apathy, a look that disconcerted Sirius more than he cared to let on.  

"My brother," she replied, her eyes flickering back to her guest, the emptiness in their gray depths veiled by a thin hajab of disgust.  Her moment of vulnerability had past.  

Sirius, trapped between a sword-carrying Scylla and a cigarette-smoking Charybdis, was nothing short of uncomfortable.  He decided to fill the void with idle conversation.  "Younger?"

"Younger what?" she said, her expression contorting with annoyance as she dragged the sword through the thick carpet, cutting a half-moon swath.

"Your brother," Sirius said, trying to pick up the slack of the conversation.  This was going significantly worse than he had anticipated.  "Is he younger than you?"

For an instant, deathly silence reigned.  "Why all this talk about my brother?" she snapped, driving the sword into the floor so hard it stuck straight up, vibrating back and forth.  "One would think you're a fucking pouf!"

Sirius felt utterly dumbfounded at this completely irrational response and more than a little bit annoyed.  "I'm sorry if I offended you, but--@

"Older," she cut his apology short.  

"What?" he said, losing his already erratic train of thought.  

"Older," she repeated, viscously pulling the sword out of the floor.  "He's older."

If Sirius had expected anything out of her, the last thing he would have predicted was a straight answer so all he had by way of reply was a rather startled, "Oh."  

"My brother," she started up as if she was going to say something, and then cut herself off, eyes flickering down to look at the carpet, several inches shorter thanks to her slapdash swordplay.  "I have made a mess, haven't I?" she said absently, sounding as if she couldn't care less.  

Sirius, never one for tact, persisted even when it was quite obvious that the matter was closed.  "Your brother what?"

Instead of lashing out as he had anticipated, Ilona raised her eyes from the floor, her gaze traveling over Sirius's shoulder to the room beyond.  An apathetic smile rested upon her lips.  "My brother," she said, a rather bitter note in her voice.  "The famous Lucius Malfoy."

Lucius Malfoy; Sirius recognized the name from the door.  His knowledge of the Malfoy family was nothing short of sketchy.  According to his pureblood friends, the Malfoys had historically been associated with the dark arts, and although rumors abounded about their connection with black magic, there was little solid proof.  It was only very recently that the Malfoys had "reformed", and one of them was a high-ranking Auror, second to only Moody. 

"Is your brother the Auror?"  Sirius persisted, feeling rather unnerved by her lack of a response.  

"There are a lot of Aurors."  Sirius jumped as he heard a voice from behind him.  "Too many, I'd say."  He turned around, knowing intuitively that the cigarette-smoking Charybdis had awakened from his slumber.  

He had never seen Lucius Malfoy up close before.  The first thing that struck him was how very like brother was to sister.  Their sharp patrician features and tall svelte frames had obviously been chipped from the same block.  The second thing that he noticed was how different they seemed; while Ilona's derisive smirk consumed her entire face, Lucius's did not extend to his eyes, remaining frozen upon his lips.  

He was wearing a woolen crewneck sweater much like his sister's, bottle green to contrast with her pearly silver.  His blond hair looked as if it had been slicked back from his forehead several days ago, but had since fallen into disrepair, tumbling into a soft fringe just below his ears, which contrasted sharply with the hard angles of his face.

"Don't be difficult, Lucius," she snapped; though Sirius noticed the half-amused grin lingering upon her lips like an afterthought.  "Our father was the Auror," she said, turning to Sirius, and not looking the least bit sorry about the fact she was using the past tense.                                             

Whether she was regretful or not, Sirius felt as if he should yet again put up the pretense of sympathy.  "I'm terribly sorry...@

She exchanged a look with Lucius, who appeared thoroughly annoyed with the whole affair.  Slowly, she returned her gaze to Sirius, her afterthought grin still lingering about her lips like the residual burn of hard liquor.  "What would you do if I told you that our father was alive, Sirius?"

Sirius, who could befriend a doorknob if he talked to it for five minutes, felt more confused and alienated than he had ever been in his whole life.  "You said he was dead."  

"Maybe I lied," she said flatly, without the slightest trace of compunction.  "I didn't," she said quickly before Sirius could open his mouth to speak.  "He's lying over there in that coffin," she jabbed towards the parlor with her sword.  "You can go over and have a look see if you fancy it.  I'd imagine he's all blue and pinched and cold, though that's no surprise.  I hear pneumonia is a terrible way to go, having the breath slowly sucked out of you bit by bit by bit.  In his letter Moody told me it took him two weeks to go, two weeks of fighting for breath, something any normal human can do naturally, simply."  To illustrate she yawned deeply, the air hissing between her teeth as she exhaled.  "It's almost poetic justice for him to die so helpless and incapacitated—this is Sirius by the way," she added suddenly to Lucius, still hovering silently in the doorway like the horrible travesty of a guardian angel.  

Feeling like the tense atmosphere was somehow his fault, even though he intellectually knew otherwise, Sirius felt obligated to be social in a situation where he would have otherwise been on his guard.  In a desperate attempt to rectify his messy introduction he took a step towards Lucius.  "Sirius Black," he said, putting on a smile that fell short of his eyes and extending an empty hand in greeting to the man in the doorway.  

Lucius didn't even look at him, icy gray eyes traveling over his shoulder to the other side of the doorway, where Ilona stood, leaning upon her sword.  "You should choose your fuck-toys with more care," he snapped.  

That was the first time Sirius had ever met Lucius Malfoy.  

It was also the first time that he began to hate Malfoy on a gut level that transcended any of their petty political differences and found its tinder on the basic, most primal level of what made Ilona's brother who he was.  

----

"I hope you're not upset with me."  Lucius didn't need to turn around to know that it was her, the smooth contours of her voice wrapping around his waist like arms would if-

If circumstances were different.  

"Why would I be upset with you?"  His voice was a valiant attempt at measured even, but the slight quiver in his tone betrayed his anger.  Behind him, he could feel her withdraw slightly, annoyance causing her retraction into her own space.  

"Don't play games with me, Lucius."  

"Why shouldn't I?" he spat viciously, half-tempted to whirl around and grab her by the wrist, preventing any sort of escape.  "You always toy with me."  

"Oh?"  As she was theoretically the epitome of a modern British gentlewoman, she did not rant or scream.  Her voice betrayed nothing but a mild annoyance, which of course, only served to incense Lucius more.  It was easy to deal with a furious opponent, but an adversary who seemed half-bored with the confrontation was a dangerous enemy indeed.  "So now it's about me, Lucius?  That's right, pretend the problem is me-- pretend it's Sirius," she saw him flinch when as she said the name, "pretend it's father, the Manor, anything but you--"  

"You don't know," he whispered, his jaw clenched, teeth gritting together so tightly he was afraid his skull would crack.  "You don't understand."  

He could feel her presence behind him and he realized that she must have used her speech to walk closer, regaining the territory lost between them.  He tried to ignore the way her breath brushed against his throat knowing she would notice his discomfort and that it would only cause her to further narrow the slim distance between them.  "Rosier was in your unit over in Vietnam; he told me everything, everything you've never said."  

She had played this card with him before, even upping the stakes by describing exactly what she had been doing to Avery at the moment of his confession, but thankfully she omitted this unnecessary detail, using the silence in which Lucius chose not to reply to take a step closer to him.  Her hand brushed against his; whether the sudden contact was inadvertent or intentional he didn't know, and it honestly mattered little.  He jerked away as if he had been burned, feeling her laugh into his shoulder.  After a mere moment that seemed like the longest while, she took a breath and continued to speak, low mocking tones wrapping around his neck like the sweetest kind of noose.  "Avery told me how you raped--"

"Avery is a bloody liar!"  He cut her off, knowing deep down that this was the exact reaction she had been expertly coaxing from him since the moment she had first stepped over the Manor's front threshold, a few short hours ago.  

"So you see," she continued as if Lucius had never spoken at all but the pleasure of success in her voice was palpable, "what I'm about to do right now is only fair, tit for tat, Lucius."  

"I don't care what you do," he hissed, feeling her lean closer to him.  For one single instant, his heart stopped.  

"Say that to my face," she replied, body pressed against his back, her corkscrew words twisting themselves into his ear, "and I won't just be able to hear what a liar you are."  

The deathly silence they shared was strung with tension, pregnant with expectation.  

"Turn around, Lucius."  Her voice, strong and domineering a moment earlier, now sounded like the desperate appeal of a small child.  She had dropped her head from whispering to lie upon his shoulder, the hollow of her cheek fitting into the curve of his throat.  When she spoke, her words were smothered by his skin, but he could hear her.  

Yes, by God, he could hear her.  

"Turn around, Lucius," she whispered, raw desperation strung through every word.  "Turn around and look me in the eye and tell me that you don't hate me."

"I don't hate you," he whispered, afraid to stay and too scared to move, the entire world narrowing to the small patch of skin where her flesh met his.  

"I can't see you," her words sounded like little more than a moan.  "I know you're lying." 

"You could be lying just as easily," he murmured, both of them knowing the emptiness of the other's taunt. 

"Don't bait me," she whispered, lips brushing against his throat as they formed each word.  "I won't be able to help myself."  

Reaching up and fitting his finger underneath her chin, he turned around, facing her for the first time.  She moved forward until her forehead bumped against his and she could move forward no more; he leaned closer, hair falling amongst her locks.  It would have been impossible for a casual observer to discern where one's hair ended and the other's began, so alike was their color.  

"What are you afraid of?" he whispered, his words trapped inside their veil of hair, existing only to the two of them.  He was instantly reminded of when, as small children, they used to play tent, draping an old blanket over two or three chairs from the parlor—they would sit under there for days on end, removed from the rest of creation, the four billion people on earth fading away to leave only two.  The dream was cut short one day when their father, oft-oblivious, dragged them out by the scruffs of their little necks demanding to know why they were so adamant about living under a two meter square piece of ragged blanket when they had the whole of Malfoy Manor to abide in.  At least, that was the excuse that their father has given them then, and at the time Lucius had understood, if not fully accepted, the merit of the old man's reprimand.  As he had grew to adulthood the incident remained in his mind, and he gradually realized that their father had put a stop to the game not because he disapproved of tents, but for the sole fact that when they were hiding under the blanket he was unable to see what they were doing.  Even as children their father didn't trust them together and rightfully so, Lucius thought as Ilona reached up into his hair, wrapping her fingers in the silvery strands and pulling him closer still.  "What are you afraid of?" he repeated, knowing that she could have just as easily turned the question upon its head and sent it straight back at him.  

To his surprise, she answered him.  "Losing you."  Her breath sliding close against his cheek, trapped within the confines of their tent of hair.

"You're pushing me away," he replied, knowing that her sharp outtake of breath was the closest thing to an assent he would ever receive.  Then the moment of affirmation past as she began to work her fingers free from his hair.  Her movements were so painfully slow that it made his heart ache; her hand, weighted down by regret, dropped listlessly to the small of his back.  

She closed her eyes, and when she next spoke, her voice was clipped, even, and death to his ears.  "Goodnight, Lucius."  

"Don't go," he whispered before he could stop himself, hand tightening in her hair-- he hadn't even noticed that he had reached upwards; the movement was unconscious, like a heart beat, a pulse thump, or a life breath.  

She chuckled, but there was no trace of mockery in her voice.  It was a sad sort of laugh, a half step away from a teary moan.  "I'll see you again Lucius-- at breakfast, and then supper, and probably the day after as well."  

"But it won't be—" he began, stopping himself before he let too much out, for the words were running like a flood, if he let it go unchecked they were sure to rupture the dike that separated the world of his imaginings from the reality of his actions.  It was a barrier that he could not allow to break.  

"Like this?" she finished for him.  

He tensed, unwilling to assent to her interpretation of his words, correct as it was.  

Somehow, she understood this and placing her hand upon his own, wrapped in her hair, she loosed his grip, working her locks free from his stranglehold.  Listlessly, he pulled his hand from her own, letting it fall limp-- empty-- by his side.  She pulled her head away from his, breaking their final tent beyond any repair, and for the first time, she met his gaze.  

What he saw there was not the usual derisive mockery or even an all-consuming despair but simply muted, resigned understanding.  "Now kiss me goodnight," she said quietly, "and I'll to my life and you'll to yours."  

He leaned forward, unable to feel anything but empty despair, sure that one rare, tantalizing moment of connection with another human being had been forever snapped, and was now fleeting steadily away before, in the space of a breath, disappearing forever.  

"Kiss me," she whispered, standing only a few inches away from his form, "kiss me goodnight like a good brother should."  

Cupping her face in his hands he bent forward, lips barely grazing the crest of her forehead until her felt her flow into the instant of contact and he was unable to restrain himself, he moved his face lower and he saw his intent reflected in her eyes just as her breath grazed against his lips--

--And the door on the opposite side of the hall flew open with a crash as the Mudblood arrived on the scene, his form accented by the gentle candlelight from the inside of Ilona's room, causing him to glow a bit at the edges.  

Caught red-handed, brother and sister looked up simultaneously, the implications of the scene hitting both of them at the same moment it struck their guest.  He didn't say anything.  He didn't really have to; the look on his face, a cruel bastard mixture of disbelief and disgust, spoke for itself.  Slowly, Ilona detached herself from Lucius and took the few steps across the hallway towards her Mudblood.  

The door slammed shut.  

He sank down against the wall, knees folding up in front of him as he listened in a stupor to the rise and fall of their voices.  The first, the Mudblood, was yelling angrily, and the second, Ilona, was laughing, consoling, smooth and unruffled, shuddering her skeleton back inside its self-contained closet.  

As Lucius wore his on his sleeve.  

He knew what she had to be saying, knew that she was saving her own skin, laying the blame upon him, laughing it off as one of Lucius's irrational obsessions-- _Vietnam__ turned him funny you know; I've never felt safe since he came back.  He always has his gaze on me-- those eyes-- oh, those eyes traveling up my spine, up and around my throat, through my lips, deep, deep inside to a place that only exists within his wildest imaginings..._

He could feel her lie just as he could feel the hard paneling pressing up against his back, never as welcome as another human, her warmth meeting his and creating something between the two.  

And eventually, the Mudblood's voice calmed and Ilona's grew smoother and then talking ceased altogether and all he could hear was the gentle creaking of a bed, up and down—its pounding rhythm fitting itself to the beat of his own pulse.  

Still he sat, even after that sound had ceased and nothing lay upon the manor but the all-consuming rhapsody of silence.  Still he sat, eyes focused straight ahead but unseeing, heart beating doggedly, but without definite reason.  So, so still he sat, legs tucked up in front of him, arms wrapped round his knees, pulling them close.  His hair fell into his face, making him look like a very small boy, without mother or father—with nothing but the dark night for company.

At that moment, Lucius started to hate Sirius Black with a passion so deep-set that it seemed like a continual ache, a stitch in his side, a bruise that would never completely heal.  

The silence hung around him like a dead man, swinging blue-lipped from the gallows.  

----

January 2, 1980

Moscow, USSR

Sirius walked over to the corner and punched him.  

Lucius did not reply.  He raised his fingers to his jaw; they came away bloody.  Calmly, he lowered his hand to his side, the red liquid staining his hands, running to the very tips of his fingers, where it hung in droplets for a moment, suspended like ornaments on a tree, before falling, falling hard and fast to splatter upon the aluminum floor, where they broke away so totally it was almost as if it had never been.  

"Don't you ever," Sirius spat, the hot fire of his anger setting his words aflame with fury, "touch her again."  

Lucius's cool and calculated reply was a sharp contrast with Sirius's raw, unadulterated fury.  "Like this?" he iterated coldly, taking a step closer towards Black as he socked him in the jaw.  

The Mudblood gave an angry roar and leapt upon him, the animal force of its fury catching Lucius off guard and off balance as the two men tumbled to the ground, smashing into the metal floor of the truck.  It was Black who ended up on top, the blood from where Lucius hit him dribbling down his chin in tiny rivulets.  Lucius tried to roll out of the way to avoid its blood but the task was impossible as Black had pinned him into immobility.  Some of the blood fell, hitting him on the forehead.  He couldn't see it, but by God he could feel it, sticky and wet and seeping—seeping into his pores, contaminating him like soil on a freshly washed sheet.  He panicked; his heart was beating tremendously fast, he couldn't believe that this was happening, that the Muggle's unclean blood was on his skin—he'd have to scrape it off, scour himself.  If somehow, some terrible how, it sunk deeper than the surface and got into his body, turning him into one of them…

The Mudblood crouched over him, leering.  It had both of his hands pinned to the ground, letting the blood fall freely from its chin to splatter upon Lucius's forehead.  The beast was trying to force its cursed blood into Lucius's veins, contaminating him mind, body, and soul.  He writhed, sheer panic causing him to jerk his legs upward, kicking the Mudblood in the shin before pushing it away with another well-aimed punt to the thigh.  It landed on the floor of the truck with a tremendous clang.  For one beautiful moment, Lucius held his breath, scarcely daring to hope that he had killed it, but then it rolled over, long dark hair falling into its eyes as it growled.  

Lucius, still on his hands and knees, tried to scramble out of the way, but the Mudblood lunged towards him.  In one fluid movement, it wrapped its arm around his throat, forcing him up onto his knees.  Lucius was instantly reminded of the Minotaur, another bastard mixture of man and beast.  The Mudblood, however, was even more of a blot upon nature than the Cretan monster, for its physical resemblance to humanity was a thousand times more conspicuous than the Minotaur's cursory likeness, making it all the more hideous.  

Lucius attacked the only part of the Mudblood readily available to him:  the arm.  Digging his right hand into the beast's flesh, he reached back around his own head with the left to where its hand rested, attempting to choke the life out of him.  Groping blindly, he managed to grab one of Black's fingers; he pulled back hard.  Lucius was rewarded with a snapping sound and a venomous curse from the Mudblood, who jerked its arm lose in surprise.  Lucius didn't waste the opportunity.  He slid under the Mudblood's grasp and leapt lightly to his feet.  

In the Minotaur ring he had never had much use for sheer brawn, relying far more heavily upon speed and agility.  Although he was roughly the same height as the Mudblood, it had a beater's body; its arms and upper body were heavily muscled, while Lucius's strength was in his legs.  If he wanted to beat the Mudblood, he needed to keep it on its feet until it tired.  

He dodged a punch from Black, and then another.  It was beginning to falter, its anger clouding its judgment and dulling its aim.  Lucius, ducking under a particularly wild swing, grabbed it by the knees and pushed it to the floor.  If he was in the arena, he would have run it through with his sword, but as he was in Moscow with no weapons except his two fists he raised his hand high and hit Black under the chin, causing its jaw to snap upward.  Pulling himself on top of the Mudblood so that it would be unable to move, he punched it hard in the face.  When his fist came away, its lips were puffy and broken, as if they'd been kissed too hard and too long, but a kiss is a kiss and a punch is a punch and the way its lips looked were a smack in the face for they reminded Lucius of the last time he had seen them together, the Mudblood in its disgusting denim jacket and Narcissa still wearing his cashmere overcoat, her mouth greedily eating up Black's, and its mouth coming away puffy—overkissed.  

He hit Black again, harder.  

Black was always there, in Moscow with Narcissa, and then back in Yorkshire, ruining his small attempts at happiness.  Stepping into the Russian Roulette and seeing Sirius Black wrapped in the arms of the woman onto which he had established his claim was like walking directly into his past.  The scene had been eerily familiar, a cruel déjà vu.  It wasn't the first time that Black had invaded his life, sacked and pillaged the fortress of his permanence, and then ridden blithely off into the sunset, Lucius's woman perched on its ridiculous bike, her blonde hair blowing in with its brown, creating an unnatural mixture of light and dark.  The Mudblood was a thief, a kleptomaniac; it didn't possess a life of its own, so it he contented itself with stealing Lucius's—carelessly turning the greater whole of Malfoy's existence to shambles.     

Pushing himself one-armed against Black so that it was impossible for the beast to move, Lucius frantically bought his weaker right hand to his lips.  Upon it rested the only one of his father's heirlooms that he wore:  a silver ring bearing an emerald relief of the Malfoy crest.  Gripping the ring between his teeth he wrenched it from his digit, then transferred hands, jamming it urgently down his left forefinger with his tongue.  Spinning the crest outwards, he clenched his hand into a fist, making sure that the sharp edge of the emerald carving was wedged between his fingers where it could do the most damage to Black.  

Black, seeing the ring and sensing Lucius's intent, jerked upwards like a beached whale, trying to throw his assailant off.  It was a futile effort, however; Lucius, who had ridden three hundred pound Minotaurs bareback in the arena too many time to count, had no trouble keeping his balance.  Coldly, Malfoy reached forward and fitted his right hand around its throat, squeezing down on the other the Mudblood's jugular as he slammed its head back into the floor.  

The Mudblood growled like a beast.  In an act of desperation, it tried to snap at Lucius's hand with his teeth, but its reach was too short and Lucius's grip too strong.  Bottled up anger boiled through Malfoy like an overflowing kettle as he raised his left arm, emerald ring winking wickedly in the half light of the truck, and brought it down upon Black's face.  When he pulled his hands away and saw the splendid swath the Malfoy crest had cut into the beast's skin, a wave of satisfaction washed over him, so intense that he couldn't bring himself to mind the Black's blood, which was beginning to pool up at its wound, dripping down the sharp contours of his cheekbone.  The Mudblood moaned; choking on his own yell of pain, which was confined to his throat by Lucius's constrictive hand.  Malfoy raised his arm for another blow, but halfway down, the beast's hand shot out from under him, reaching frantically upward to grab Malfoy's fist mid-punch.  Lucius, furious, tried to wrench his hand from the Mudblood's grip, but it was impossible.  It was like a rabid dog, foaming at the mouth as it gripped Lucius so tight its nails made five slivers of black in Malfoy's pale skin.  

Empowered by his sudden success, Sirius swerved his head sideways, his neck rolling on top of Malfoy's right hand, crushing the other man's slender fingers.  The blond jerked his hand away as if he had been burned and Sirius took the opportunity to fit his right leg over Malfoy's thighs.  Putting all his weight into the movement, he threw himself sideways taking the other man with him.  The blond broke Sirius's fall as the two men rolled completely over, reversing positions.  Sirius wasted no time; reaching forward, he grabbed Malfoy's left hand.  Lucius, sensing the other man's intention, closed his fingers into a fist, but Sirius, possessed by the demon of his fury, was not to be dissuaded.  He forced Lucius's palm open and wrenched the Malfoy crest off of the blond's hand, bending his forefinger back unnaturally far in the process.  Lucius's pale face went white in a bastard mixture of pain and rage as Sirius jammed the ring down upon his own hand, turning the gemstone outwards, just as Malfoy had, so that it could cut into the other man's flesh, amplifying the effects of his punch.  He raised his arm; he brought it down—

Lucius yelled, the physical manifestation of his pain joining his vocal expression of agony as it dripped down his forehead in a tiny river of red.  "How does that feel, Malfoy?"  Sirius spat, his ordinarily attractive face turned into a ghastly mask by the swaths of red smeared across it like visceral war paint.  "How does that bloody feel?"  

Malfoy snapped his head backwards, putting the whole force of his body behind himself as he jerked upwards, spitting into Sirius's face.  

Sirius had to close his eyes to avoid being blinded and Lucius took the opportunity to fit both of his hands around the other man's shoulders, pushing him backwards, slamming him into the far wall of the truck.  As Sirius doubled over, winded, Malfoy scrambled across the aluminum floor to meet him.  Gripping him by the shoulder, he pushed his upwards, smashing him against the side of the vehicle.  The light in the lorry was such that only the bottom half of Lucius's face was visible.  Sirius stared, entranced by the other man's twisted smile, its malevolent contours malformed by the livid bruise that was already forming at the base of his chin.  Hands trembling with adrenaline, Malfoy reached into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket, pulling out a dark strip of wood that could only be his wand.  

"I'd kill you, Black," he hissed, pulling Sirius away from the wall of the truck, only to ram him against it even harder, "but _Avada Kedravra would be too quick, the satisfaction fleeting, like just another Minotaur—"_

"You're a sick fuck, Malfoy," Sirius hissed through bleeding lips.  He was so close to Lucius that he could whisper into the other man's ear.  

"And you're a quick one," Malfoy spat in retaliation, his breath hot against Sirius's throat.  "She won't mind when I tell her that you're dead.  You're nothing to her, Black," he spat derisively, "_nothing."  _

"You're a bloody liar—"

Malfoy laughed coldly.  "Too bad you won't be around for her to prove it to you.  _Crucio!"_

Everything seemed to happen at once.  Narcissa, who had been standing terrified in the corner during most of their fight, finally worked up the nerve to make her move, leaping down upon Lucius and causing his spell to go wide, burning a smoking red hole in the side of the truck.  Sirius barely had time to struggle to his feet before the front door of the lorry smashed open, crashing against the far wall with a resounding bang.  Three men carrying semi-automatic rifles burst in to crash their party.  

Sirius recognized the first one as the KGB agent from the night before.  He looked worse for the wear; there was a nasty bruise upon his left cheek and a swath of white gauze peeked out from under the lip of his beaver hat.  His apparent injuries, however, had caused him to lose none of his authority.  "What is going on here?" he barked angrily in Russian.  

None of them got a chance to reply, for at that moment, no less than twenty wizards Apparated in a tight circle that rimmed the interior of the truck.  All were dressed in high collared robes of dark gray and although Sirius had never seen anything like them before, there was little doubt in his mind as to who they were.  "You are under arrest by order of the _Sovjetski Drustvo Earovnik," one of the wizards called from the shadows of the truck, "for unauthorized wand use within sight of the nonmagical proletariat…"  The wizard's words blended away into a dull roar.  Sirius knew that he was in far too deep; he was under arrest.  There was no one to pay his bail, to even inform his friends—and yet, all of this seemed shallow, transitory.  There was only one real thought on his mind._

"Narcissa!" he yelled.  She had just managed to disentangle herself from Malfoy and was standing stock still on the left side of the truck, looking completely overwhelmed.  "Run!"  

The ring of SDE wizards rendered escape essentially impossible for Malfoy and himself; they had been at the epicenter of the spell and were now smack dab in the vertex of the circle of sorcerers.  But Narcissa was at the farthest edge of the ring of warlocks, a few short paces away from the door, still swinging open from the KGB agent's sudden entrance.  Almost immediately, the SDE wizards began to move towards the door in an effort to stop her.  The KGB agents, who had been standing dumbfounded ever since the sudden apparition of twenty full-grown men into their top security prison, began to follow suit, finding consolation in mindless routine.  Sirius was seized by a manic energy.  Reaching frantically into his jacket he pulled out his wand, causing the KGB agents to chuckle and the SDE wizards to balk.  Ignoring everything except the task at hand, he pointed his wand at the wizard nearest to Narcissa, who stood stock still despite his command, paralyzed with terror.  "_Stupefy!" he called, a jet of blue-white light shooting from his wand to hit the other man full in the chest.  He crumpled like a rag doll.  _

The spell snapped Narcissa out of her stupor.  She began to run, pushing one of the KGB agents out of the way.  But then another moved up behind her, leveling his rifle—Sirius whipped around, yelling the curse, watching the man fall, but even as he crumpled another assailant came up on her other side and he knew there was no way he would be fast enough, it was all over for her then and there—

"_Crucio!"  Sirius wheeled around as the curse zipped through the dim truck towards the wizard.  He only had time to stare at Malfoy for a moment, open-mouthed, before the SDE wizard's scream jerked him back to Narcissa.  She paused for an instant as well, staring in shock at the man writhing in agony at her feet, his back arching upward in a half-moon sickle as he screeched like a cat in heat.  But then her survival instinct took over and she turned her eyes away, running towards the open door and the tantalizing glimpse of the world beyond.  _

Sirius fell to his knees, ducking a curse from one of the SDE wizards.  He felt Malfoy drop down beside him, but whether he was simply ducking or had been knocked out, Sirius couldn't tell.  He dared not turn his eyes away from Narcissa to see, shooting a Stupefying hex at a wizard approaching her from behind.  It was only when another of Narcissa's assailants fell to the red flame of the Cruciatus curse that Sirius realized that Malfoy was all right.  

Another curse flew over Sirius's head, missing him by inches.  He blindly fired a "_Stupefy!" back over his shoulder, desperately hoping it hit the mark, but refusing to turn around and see, because then he would have to rip his eyes from Narcissa, leaving her vulnerable, if only for an instant.  The normal passage of time stretched into endless instants of frantic heartbeats and even more frenetic curses; Sirius reverted to autopilot:  leveling his wand, yelling the spell, watching her pale form dart through the darkness of the truck like a wraith—after an eternity that amounted to ten seconds, the impossible occurred and she reached the door, the pale light of the Moscow morning causing her to glow with reflected dawn.  Slowly, she turned around to gaze at him, a look of sheer terror on her beautiful face.  He knew she didn't want to leave him like this, but she had to understand that there wasn't any other way.  Despite the urgency of the situation, he allowed himself one moment to gaze at her, memorizing the pale contours of her features to call back whenever he deigned, well aware that this might be the last time he saw his Russian whore.  Before long, she would step over the edge of the truck, breaking the barrier between imprisonment and freedom—and in the process, be lost to him forever.  He gazed at her as if he would never look on her again.  _

Strangely enough, he suffer sadness, or melancholy, or any of the one thousand other downhearted emotions he expected to feel when faced with her eminent departure.  He was glad, not because she was leaving, but because she _could leave.  He had bought her freedom with his own, repaying part of the gross debt he owed her—alleviating a bit of his own guilt.    _

It was the least that he could do.  

"Run, bitch!" Malfoy's harsh yell cut through her stupor as his Cruciatus curse whooshed through the air, hitting one of the KGB agents who had leveled his rifle at Narcissa in her instant of indecision.  The man had been seconds away from pulling the trigger, prematurely ending her escape once and for all.  Sirius cursed himself for loosing his focus in the dizzying whirlpool of her gaze, his resolve sucked away by the maelstrom of her allure, because in his moment of weakness it was Malfoy who had prevailed.  With one last pained look at the both of then, she turned and leapt down off the lip of the truck, vanishing into the city beyond.  

Several SDE wizards, evidently fearing a similar escape, ran over to the door and slammed it shut, reducing the truck to a state of semi-darkness, illuminated only by the colored light of flying curses.  An acid green hex whistled past Sirius's ear, singing his hair and missing him by a matter of inches.  He threw himself against the floor, rolling to the left to avoid a similar attack; when suddenly, he collided with a body.  He thought it was one of the SDE wizards felled by his curses until it reached out, gripped him by the arm and asked, "Black?" the familiar voice slicing through the impenetrable darkness.  

A silver curse whistled by, briefly illuminating the harsh lines of Malfoy's face before slamming into the wall of the truck.  It shattered into a thousand silver sparks that fell down upon then like acid rain, burning away at their exposed flesh.  Separate minds operating as one, they rolled out of the way and then struggled to their feet, standing back to back, linked unwillingly by their fierce instinct for survival.  

Sirius went into autopilot, desperately shooting ice-blue stupefying hexes into the ever-encroaching crowd of SDE wizards.  He didn't have time to calculate, to think, only to act as the magic that was his only chance for survival coursed through his body to the tip of his wand where it spiraled away, blue-white and unforgiving, felling all that it touched.  The fiery light of Malfoy's spell illuminated his peripheral vision, rimming his world in constant red.  

But there were too many for them.  As the noose of dark gray drew tighter and tighter around their tiny circle of blue and red light, Sirius was possessed by a steadily infringing despair.  He would have believed that it was all some terrible dream if it wasn't for the weight of Malfoy's back against his own as they futilely shot curses into the tightening ring of wizards, slowly choking the life out of them like a strangler's wire.  But their hands were metaphorically tied and there was no way out—now way in, no way back, front, left, right—no direction except down, down—falling down hard and fast and painlessly, too—his mind too deep in the uncharted wilds of unconsciousness to feel the hard pressure of the ground.  It was pressure, pressure in the form of Malfoy's shoulders that kept Sirius from giving into the Russians' curses and slipping into that vast void of stupefied oblivion.  The feeling was unwelcome, unnatural, and indispensable—a desperate crutch to his incapacitated invalid, a stolen cigarette for his ex-nicotine addict on the rebound, demeaning and indispensable in one single cylinder of rolled paper and clipped tobacco.  If the steadying weight of Malfoy's shoulders burned away, leaving nothing but smoky lungs and a smear of ash, Sirius knew he was as good as gone.  The instants dragged into horrible seconds and still the SDE sorcerers moved ever closer until all he could see was a continuous wall of dark gray.  And after a little while, Sirius felt the firm pressure against his shoulders fall to lie crumpled behind his feet.  In that horribly inevitable moment, he felt more alone that he had in his entire life.

The wall of wizards moved steadily forward, surrounding Sirius on all sides—swallowing him whole.  

----

**More Disclaimer: _Dulce et Decorum Est is a poem by Wilfred Owen about gas attacks in World War One that can be read here; the actual line is "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" which roughly translates as "how sweet and fitting it is to die for your country".  The names Vladimir Ulyanov and Josef Dzhugashvilli are also not mine, they respectively belong to Lenin and Stalin.  Malfoy Manor and its residents are somewhat inspired by Emily Brontë's _Wuthering Heights_ and the "LUCIUS MALFOY—1801" is a direct reference to the novel.  Ilona's "If it wasn't for the central heating" line is filched from "Whatever Happened to George Foster?" a particularly excellent episode of the 1960s television show __Secret Agent Man (aired as __Danger Man in Britain) starring Patrick McGoohan.  Sirius's "When I wake up in the morning, I'll be sober" line must be credited to Winston Churchill, although he called the woman in question ugly, instead of a cheat.  Avery's "Let's see if we can't make this party engaging," line is paraphrased directly from the book of Kander and Ebb's musical __Cabaret.  The Russian Roulette itself is loosely based upon a historical club (which was more a gambling den than an actual dance hall) which operated in 1970s Soviet Moscow by a woman named Elizabeth Miriken. Like the fictional Zvana, Miriken's husband was in a Gulag. So I apologize here for any libel to the Mirikens, and any harm I do to their illegal club.  So now that I've revealed that I've actually written about 1% of this fic…_**

**…UP NEXT: Who is this Laurence guy and why is he privy to Moody's private meeting?  Whatever happened to the Sad Clown brouhaha?  Why does Sirius really want to take Narcissa to the seashore… does he just want to build sandcastles or is there something deeper?  All these questions and more answered in Russian Roulette Chapter 5, tentatively titled _Orpheus and Eurydice…__ in which Narcissa finally takes a stand, James gets a chance to swallow both pride and prejudice, and Sirius and Lucius once again enjoy the pleasure of each other's company.  _**

**Shameless Plug-ness:  Bop on over to HP_Atlantis on Yahoo!Groups to see some wonderful Russian Roulette fanart by Hydy, Belphegor, Jen, and myself and while you're over there check out the other truly excellent fics over there by authors that put me to shame.  **

**Thanks to all those who reviewed: Rhianna (well Sirius didn't die, but he's not much better off this time… so far, every chapter has ended with Sirius getting either laid or knocked unconscious, let's hope he has better luck next time :) ), Ayla Pascal (Thank you, darlin'—I'm scampering off to read _Slytherin Rising), Tabitha82 (I'm sorry you had to wait so long, I promise I'll try to cut the six month break between chapters next time), AVK (those weren't intended to be Bond references, but I'm a big 007 fan  nonetheless), Cybele (Thank you!  And yes, I'm afraid to say that Sirius is indeed married… but Lucius is still single, as Narcissa will soon discover), Melodylemmng (I'm glad to hear you like James, prig or not, after all that he's been through he needs some love), Tess (Thank you very much—I really appreciate the offer for Russian help.  I've tried to shy away from any Russian in this chapter, but if you don't mind, I would like to take you up on that offer if the need arises), Hydy (Where, may I ask is Rosa Croeca?  Not that I should talk, being Ms. Six-Months-Between-Chapters, but I'm very excited for the next bit :) ), IckleRonniekins (who, despite the screen name, is my favorite fellow Lucius fan ::schnoogles::), like a child (Thank you very much for your review, and the con crit in particular—Sirius and James's ages have been a sticking point for me as well), Rezo (Russophiles unite… we should start a club!), Ivy Unpoisoned (Thank you, Ivy—sappy as this sounds, your review meant a tremendous amount to me, and helped me keep writing when I almost gave up on this beast of a fic), jen beckett (Jen, darling, I never got a chance to thank you for your wonderful cover art—which is just perfect for the fic—and thank you also for your (two!) reviews :) ), Christina (Me?  Poke fun?  Why would I do a think like that?  Thank you very much for the note on libel and slander), Unregistered (I'm sorry this chapter took so long, if you're looking for more Sirius/Narcissa there is of course the Draco Trilogy—and Celtic Flame and Calypso both have very excellent S/N fics at FictionAlley), StarwberryRain (Please don't injure me!  I promise I won't take as long next time…), Aurora Hyperion (Another Cabaret fan!  I would actually compare Ilona to Sally more than Narcissa—although the song __Mein__ Herr definitely applies to both of them), Katja (I put you on the Quidditch pitch?  Did you see?  I know it's not quite a Bratwurst Magnet or even Stalin in an Elvis jumpsuit but that's probably for the best), Susan Bones (Thank you very much), kavitha11 (Kudos for picking up on the Sirius/Ilona connection—and thanks for such a great review)_**

**Please read and review, let me know what you thoughts—constrictive criticism is always appreciated, although I won't turn down the occasional compliment.  **


End file.
